Free Falling
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: Sequel to Learning to Soar. Juno is free but Desmond is dead, and the people he left behind are willing to do anything to make sure she pays for that. But the closer they get to their goal, the more complicated life gets- and in the end, they may get more than just revenge. They may finally understand why they've grow wings.
1. Chapter 1

There are reasons for everything that happens.

After years of being tossed from one timeline to another without any control, after a lifetime of dealing with wings and impossible coincidences, Altair believes that everything happens for a reason. Even if he doesn't know what that reason is, he's always sure there must be one. There's no other way to explain the mess that his life has become. Constantly running into new people with wings, sometimes in the most random and unexpected situations, isn't something that can be explained by pure chance. There has to be a reason, and that's something he believes.

Believed.

Because returning to the first civilization temple and seeing Desmond's dead body has utterly destroyed any faith he had in the universe making sense. He'd thought- up until the moment he saw Desmond's body lying cold and stiff on the ground where it had fallen- he'd thought something would happen. Some last minute miracle that would save both him and the rest of the world. But that hasn't happened, and now Desmond is dead.

(Dead, dead, dead, never coming back)

Altair has insisted on coming back alone because he wants to be the first one to know what happened to Desmond. William had put up a feeble argument, but in the end he is the mentor of the assassins first and a father second. But for Altair, all that is the same thing. His sense of self, his life as an assassin, his duties toward Desmond, they're all so tied up together that he can't bring himself to just be one. And now that Desmond is gone, Altair doesn't know what he's going to do.

He hadn't realized it would be like this. All those years ago, when he'd first found Desmond and brought him home, he hadn't realized that losing him would hurt this much. He's lost people before, even people close to him. And those losses had been bad, but none of them had felt like he'd died a little along with them.

It's been years since Desmond had been the scared, lost boy Altair remembers from those early days. Back then, Altair hadn't known a lot about what exactly he'd gotten himself into. Hadn't realized what it meant to bring a kid into his life, someone that would rely on him for literally everything, who couldn't protect himself and really, truly _needed _him. Altair can remember, with vivid clarity, the sight of Desmond as he had been then, smaller than any eight year old should be, dwarfed by his new grown wings, his arms and legs like sticks.

This is the first time in a long time that Altair has given any thought to those early days but now, looking at the corpse Desmond had left behind, Altair can't help thinking how helpless and small the- the body is. All Altair wants to do is protect him, the way he'd been able to do years ago when Desmond was still small. But it's too late. Desmond is cold and dead and (so horribly) broken on the ground, wings broken beneath him on the stony ground. Altair reaches forward and closes Desmond's eyes, then stands and turns his back on the corpse that had been his son. It almost kills him to leave Desmond's body behind, but there's no other choice. He has no time for a burial, not with where he's going and what he has to do.

Juno had manipulated Desmond into giving his own life, and freeing her in the process. For that, Juno has to die.

-/-

"Is he-"

"Dead," Altair snaps, without looking at Ezio. The other man winces at Altair's tone, and Altair forces himself to remember that he's not the only one here that had cared for Desmond. In fact, judging by the long faces and grim silence of the temporary place the assassins have taken shelter in, all of them are mourning to some extent.

"It doesn't seem right," Rebecca whispers, her expressive face crumpled in misery. "Just leaving him there."

"We don't have a choice," William says, and Altair amends his earlier opinion- alone out of all of them, William looks almost wholly unaffected by Desmond's death. A viscous, petty corner of Altair's mind wants to assume there's no feelings there, that William really is the asshole he looks like. But by now, he knows William well enough by now to realize the man does actually have feelings. He just acts like he doesn't, and to Altair that is far more despicable.

Unfortunately, Altair happens to agree with William in this case- but the callous tone in his voice makes Altair want to fight, just on principal. Instead, he makes his way over to where Rebecca sits, a little apart from the others and seeming oddly incomplete without the computers Altair has gotten used to seeing her with. He's known her for more than ten years, ever since Desmond's freshman year of high school. And suddenly- without wanting it at all- the memory of the first time he'd met Rebecca comes rushing over him, hitting Altair like a physical blow.

_One day._

_One day into the ninth grade, and already Desmond had managed to earn himself a detention. Altair has no idea what for, only that he really doesn't have time for this today. He'd gotten a call earlier, a prerecorded message that began 'Sir or Madam, please be informed that your child has received disciplinary measures…' and had told him nothing helpful except that Desmond would be missing the bus home and need to be picked up after the detention._

_So Altair finds himself sitting in the parking lot, waiting impatiently for Desmond to come out. But when someone finally approaches, it's a stranger. Altair looks her over carefully in both normal and eagle vision, but both show that she's no threat so he relaxes. A little. She's a solid inch or two shorter than he is, with bright green hair (badly died and faded to brown at the roots), wearing a pair of ridiculously large headphones around her neck. She's got an impressive black eye over one side of her face, and Altair notices that she limps slightly as she jogs over to him._

_"Hey," she says. "Are you Desmond's dad?"_

_Altair nods, still a little wary and waiting for some kind of explanation. "Who are you?"_

_"Rebecca," she says. "Rebecca Crane. Anyway, Desmond's on his way out but I just wanted to tell you that the detention really wasn't his fault. I mean, he only climbed up the mobile because Mrs. Collins- she's pretty much the nicest teacher here, I swear everyone loves her- she brought her cat into class because the AC at her place is busted but it got out during fifth period, and I thought that since cats climb trees that's where she might be-"_

_She stops for breath and Altair starts to interrupt, but Rebecca barrels on again before he has a chance. "And I was right about that, actually, but it's easier to get up the side of the mobile than the tree so I went up there and then Desmond saw me and thought I was stuck so he went up after me and that's when someone saw us and we both got detention." She gives Altair a completely serious look. "We did get the cat, though. I kind of fell out of the tree-" She gestures to her black eye- "But it's fine, really. And Desmond was only trying to help, so I just thought you should know it wasn't really his fault, and he shouldn't get in any more trouble than he already has."_

_"I don't-"_

_But someone calls for Rebecca, and she manages a wave before limping toward a woman that looks like her mother, who looks very unhappy at the moment. Altair can hear her shouting as Rebecca climbs into the passenger seat and the two of them drive off. A minute or two later, Desmond comes slinking out of the school, clearly expecting a lecture. Instead, Altair waits until Desmond is settled in the passenger seat, and bursts out laughing._

_"Are you okay?" Desmond asks when he's finally stopped. He looks sideways at Altair like he wants to ask if the man has just gone insane, but doesn't._

_"I heard you're rescuing cats out of trees now," Altair says. "Or did it have more to do with the girl than the cat?"_

_Desmond turns bright red, and his refusal to answer is answer enough._

"What are you smiling about?" Rebecca asks. She kicks at the wall next to her chair and frowns at him like he's betraying Desmond by being happy so soon after his death. "I could be wrong, but I don't think there's any good news to be smiling about right now."

"That's not exactly true," Altair says. "Desmond did save the world."

"But he died doing it," Rebecca says. "That's not how it's supposed to work."

"I know," Altair says. "It's not fair, but…" he can't think of a way to finish the sentence, because from his point of view no amount of good could make up for Desmond being dead. So he changes the subject instead. "Do you remember when you and Desmond met?"

"The day Mrs. Collins left her cat in a tree," Rebecca says, managing a small smile of her own. "Yea, I haven't thought about that in ages, but- yea. Good day." She shakes her head. "I still can't believe that was you," she says. "You were just like everyone else's dad when we were in high school, and then you turn out to be… you. Famous assassin from the twelfth century, time traveler, half bird… thing."

"Not the most complimentary description I've ever heard," Altair says. "But accurate. More or less."

"So that's what you were smiling about?" Rebecca asks.

Altair nods. "I think Desmond used to have a crush on you for a while in school."

"Well, yea," Rebecca says. "That's how we ended up dating my last semester." She glances at Altair, then does a double take at the look on his face. "Which you apparently knew nothing about. But I mean, it wasn't a big deal. Just a couple of months and then we decided it wasn't working out and we'd be better off as friends."

Altair very briefly considers being upset about this, and then realizes there's no point. Desmond is gone, and Altair has always known there must be some parts of his life that were secrets. So apparently Rebecca had been one of them. There are so many worse secrets Desmond could have kept that this one actually comes as a relief.

Shaun ambles over to the two of them and sits in a chair next to Rebecca. "What are you two talking about?" he asks.

"Ex-boyfriends," Rebecca answers promptly.

"Yours or his?"

"Look at you, trying to be funny."

Altair interrupts before the flirting can really get serious, because he is absolutely not in the mood to listen to any more of that. He'd heard enough of it back in the temple. "I need to ask you something," he says. "Both of you, actually."

"What?"

"I'm going after Juno," Altair says. He's been thinking about how to say this, all kinds of explanations and preambles that could have helped this make some sense, but in the end opts for the direct approach. "She needs to die, and I… need help to make that happen as soon as possible."

"Yes," Shaun says, surprising Altair by speaking up first. He'd expected Rebecca to volunteer before Shaun.

"Rebecca?"

"Of course," she says. "Sorry, I thought it was obvious. So what do we do?"

"A good question," William says, and Altair abruptly realizes the rest of the room has gone quiet to listen to them. "Killing Juno isn't going to be easy. She's been planning this for thousands of years, and I highly doubt she'll allow anyone to kill her after all that."

Altair makes a frustrated noise and turns to look at William. "I'm finding it very hard to care about what Juno wants right now," he says. "And I am willing to spend as much time and effort as necessary figuring out how to kill her."

William considers this for a while, and Altair can see his own dislike mirrored on William's face as he looks at him. Clearly the feelings are mutual. But finally he nods. "It's not that I won't," he says. "I can't."

"I understand," Altair says, although he doesn't. "You have responsibilities besides revenge. I don't."

"Then go," William says. "Take care of Juno. Keep Shaun and Rebecca with you as long as you need them."

"I'm a little hurt you didn't ask any of us," Ezio says, gesturing at himself, Haytham, and Connor.

"You're family," Altair says dismissively. "You don't have a choice."

"Good," Ezio says. "Let's kill Juno."

**-/-**

**So... after much hesitation because I'm not 100% sure where this is going, here is the first chapter of Free Falling. I had originally planned to wait until I got more written but someone told me today they wanted to know what happened after the end of Learning to Soar. Please bear with me, I swear it gets less depressing after a couple chapters.**


	2. Chapter 2

William gets a call early the next morning, and leaves the hideout with his bags packed and an obvious intention not to come back. Altair watches him go, not sure if he should be angry or upset, but eventually decides it doesn't matter. William has made his choices clear, over and over again, and there's no point in expecting anything better from him. Besides, they have an assassination to plan.

There are five of them, not counting himself. Ezio, Haytham, Connor, Rebecca, and Shaun. Altair studies them all with a critical eye, because this seems like a pitifully small group, considering the kinds of resources the first civilization left behind. Resources that Juno will have access to now. For centuries, the assassins and templars have fought over their scraps, struggling with technologies they don't understand at all, like infants poking at computers.

The six of them are absolutely no match for what Altair assumes Juno will be able to do now that she's been freed. Altair comes to this realization at exactly the same moment he decides he just doesn't care. It doesn't matter if they're doomed to fail, because he can't imagine not trying. The only question is whether or not the others feel the same. "So," Altair says. "Before we start, you need to understand that this will be difficult-"

"Or impossible," Rebecca says. She sounds much more cheerful than she had during her talk with Altair earlier. "Who cares?"

"Well-"

"Everyone here knows what we're walking into," Haytham says. "None of us are fools, and if we didn't want to be here, we'd have left already."

"Fine," Altair says, a little annoyed at the constant interruptions. "Just as long as we all know this is most likely a suicide mission, then I guess we can move on."

The words 'suicide mission' make Shaun suck in his breath, a quick, sharp sound that makes Rebecca reach for his hand and squeeze gently. But no one else says anything, and even Shaun seems like he isn't so much giving up as he is afraid. And fear is fine. Fear is natural in a situation like this. But fear is not a reason to give up, and Shaun doesn't make any move to leave so Altair decides that's good enough for him.

"What's our first step?" Ezio asks.

"Research," Altair says, and he's ready for the twisted up face Ezio makes in response.

"My favorite," he says.

"We need to know more about Juno if we want a shot at killing her," Altair goes on. "Everything we know about the precursors has come from what they've told us themselves. And I don't doubt that what we've heard is fundamentally true, but we need more details."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Connor asks. "They've been gone longer than any human society has existed. It's just not possible to find information that old."

"Not true," Shaun says. "We already have access to a lot of the places they built because of what we've seen ourselves and in the animus. That means we have architecture, artifacts- culture, basically."

"Good," Altair says. "I want you and Ezio to start looking into whatever you can."

"Research?" Ezio asks, pulling the same face as he had earlier.

"You're just hunting down first civilization artifacts, the same as you always do," Altair says. "Except you're taking Shaun with you, because he's actually a historian and should be able to get something helpful." Hopefully, they'll be able to get along well enough to actually accomplish something- given their wildly different personalities, he expects there to be some amount of arguing. Unfortunately, they're the two best suited for this part of the job. And anyway they're both adults and should be able to handle the conflict.

"And what about the rest of us?" Connor asks.

"We need sources inside both the assassins and templars," Altair says. "If anything new happens with Juno or- I don't know, anything else- they'll be the first ones to know. So Connor, the assassins already know you, so you need to go back to them and keep your ears open."

"And the templars?" Haytham asks. He crosses his arms and glares at Altair in as intimidating a manner as he can. "Is this going where I think it's going, or-"

"Someone has to infiltrate them," Altair says. "I'm not saying it has to be you."

But no one volunteers. Of course they don't, they're assassins and the idea of going near the templars is not a pleasant one. In the end, it is Haytham that sighs and gives in. "Fine," he says. "As long as we all have the understanding that I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing this because you're asking and because it needs to be done."

"Of course," Altair says. Haytham had spent years alienated from the rest of them while they had been under the mistaken impression he'd gone back to the templars. That's not going to happen again. "Do you really think the person going undercover with the templars would be someone I _didn't _trust?"

"No," Haytham says. He doesn't relax his posture, but his voice sounds a little less offended than it had earlier.

"So," Rebecca says, turning to look at Altair. "Shaun's going with Ezio, Connor and Haytham are keeping track of assassins and templars, so what are we doing?"

"We're going to find Juno," Altair says. "Because it doesn't matter how much we find out about _how _to kill her unless she's actually there to be killed."

And Rebecca nods, looking unusually grim. "I like this plan," she says.

-/-

Within twenty four hours, Altair and Rebecca are the only ones left in the hideout. The place is really too big with the others gone, but the size of the building is the least of Altair's worries at the moment. If this is going to become their new base of operations, it needs to be secure and right now it's not. The location itself is good, isolated and surrounded by forests, built on the top of a hill with a good view of every possible approach.

But if the outside of the safe house is more or less perfect, the inside is a complete disaster. The first floor is one large, open space, with floor to ceiling windows on the southern wall and hardly any cover to speak of. A small and understocked kitchen takes up one corner of the room, and a curved staircase on the other side leads to the second floor.

There, an indoor balcony wraps all the way around the house's circumference, with two bedrooms on each side, a pair of bathrooms, and even more of the same type of windows from the ground floor. Because none of the room are connected to each other, the entire floor is a collection of dead ends and blind corners, the exact opposite of the kind of place he'd want to be in if there's every a fight.

"It's been used by the assassins for the past couple decades," Rebecca says when Altair voices his list of complaints. "Back before the templars started getting the upper hand, and there were enough assassins to rotate teams in and out of the field, this was a kind of rest house. It's secluded, you know? Restful. They'd send people here when they'd finished a particularly bad mission, or to recover from injuries, but as far as I know it hasn't been used since before I joined the order. We can't afford to pull people out of the field anymore."

"Well that explains the state of this place," Altair says. That's the other major issue he's noticed (so far)- everything is covered in dust or half fallen apart or both at once. It's going to take days of maintenance work before the house will be safe enough to really work out of. "But why use it at all? There have to be safer places for recuperation."

"Sometimes it's not about being safe," Rebecca says. "Sometimes you just get to that point where you've just seen so much and done so much that you don't care what happens to you. This place was built by this really rich Wall Street guy a while back. His wife was a bystander in a templar attack and killed. He was in his sixties, too old to be recruited by the assassins. So he gave resources instead, money and safe houses and so on. And his granddaughter joined in his place."

"I'm sensing that his story ended badly," Altair says.

"His granddaughter died too," Rebecca says. "Too much stress, too many missions in not enough time. She made a careless mistake and was killed. He hanged himself the next day. That's why his house is the one we used for assassins that have been through too much."

"Then why did William bring us here?" Altair snaps. "The last thing we need is a break."

"Yea," Rebecca says. "But you know, it's funny."

"What?"

"Desmond died three days ago," Rebecca says quietly. "And I don't think I've seen you sit down for more than five minutes at a time since then."

"There's no time," Altair says. "There's so much we need to do-"

"Yes," Rebecca says. "But we _do_ have some time. We're not working on a deadline anymore, so you can take a little bit of a break. Or if you can't manage that, then at least focus on getting the house ready. It's less stressful than going after Juno right away, anyway."

Altair almost shouts at her. He almost growls, almost snaps, almost grabs her by the shoulders and shakes her until she stops pretending to know how he feels. But he does none of that, and turns and storms away instead. There is a lot of work to do here, and he might as well get started.

He and Rebecca barely speak over the next few days. Rebeca is occupied with her laptop, hacking her way into whatever systems she thinks might be helpful in their search for Juno. Altair focuses more on the physical problems of the safe house. The entire structure of the building makes it nearly impossible to defend, so he turns his attention elsewhere.

He's well acquainted with forests by now. Although he doesn't have the same easy familiarity as Connor, he'd spent most of his time in colonial America traveling from city to city or in temporary camps in the woods between them. And while the landscape has changed radically in the past few centuries, it is still similar enough that Altair is able to do what he needs to. He plants traps, scouts the area for paths intruders are most likely to take, and prepares escape routes in case of emergency.

It takes a little over a week for Altair to finish the work to his own satisfaction. During that time, he's almost always busy, his mind overwhelmingly taken over with simple matters of survival. It's good. There's no room for grief or worry or fear. Just the work. The problem comes when he's done- he knows that as soon as he slows down, the memories and the sorrow will catch up with him. He's determined not to let that happen, so he starts making plans to start the search for Juno.

Unfortunately, Rebecca isn't ready. "I'm sorry," she says, without looking away from her computer screen. "I had to leave most of my equipment when we left temple, so this is taking longer than it should."

"So when-"

"I don't know," Rebecca mumbles, attention already drifting away from the conversation. "Two days? Three? I'll let you know when I'm done." And Altair can see there's no point in rushing her, because she's clearly putting everything she has into the task. So Altair leaves her alone.

It takes Rebecca five full days (instead of two or three) to finish, and during that time, Altair has absolutely nothing to do. Now, his mind is free to really dwell on everything he's been trying not to think about. It's not fun, and to some extent the five days blur into one long stream of misery. Now that he's started thinking, he can't stop.

He keeps wondering what's going to happen after Juno is dead. The world will definitely make the world safer, but it definitely won't bring Desmond back. He's questioning his own motives and he doesn't like it.

Sometime during the fourth day, Altair hits his real low point. Over the past couple weeks, Altair has averaged about four hours of sleep per night, waiting until he's ready to drop from exhaustion before he crashes into bed. He knows from experience that's the best way to keep from dreaming.

But now, with no work to do and no way to keep himself distracted and busy, Altair finally has the nightmares he's been avoiding. He passes out a little before sunset, and sleeps until almost noon the next day. The entire time he's asleep, he's dreaming, old memories of Desmond as a child, recent ones of him dead on the floor of the temple. And always, always, always, the ever present guilt of wondering if he should have done something differently, if he could have saved Desmond's life if he'd been smarter or faster or _better_. It's a miserable night.

When he wakes he wanders downstairs, still half in a daze from the long sleep and terrible dreams, to find Rebecca in the kitchen. She's holding a large mug of black coffee and staring out the window with a distant expression like she's a million miles away. She's sitting cross legged on the island counter that separates the kitchen from the rest of the floor, so Altair comes over to stand behind her, leaning forward so his elbows and forearms are resting on the counter next to Rebecca.

For a while, they watch the woods through the window in silence as thunder rumbles overhead and fat drops of rain run down the glass. Weirdly, Altair feels better than he has for weeks. Not happy, of course. Not even normal. But the sleep has helped him get his head on straight. He hadn't realized how badly the lack of sleep had been affecting him, and he hadn't realized how badly he'd needed the nightmares. He'd been afraid of how bad they would be, and afraid he wouldn't be able to handle them. Now that he knows, he can deal with them. Even if they're awful, knowing _how _awful means he doesn't have to be afraid of them anymore.

"So," Rebecca says after almost half an hour of silence. "You look better."

He nods. "You may have had a point about this place," he says. Then, reluctantly because he doesn't want to sound weak- "And about me. I should have listened and taken some time off."

"Something tells me you're not too great at taking advice," Rebecca says. "But are you okay to work now?"

"Yes," Altair says. "Does that mean you're ready?"

"Yep," Rebecca takes a long, satisfied drink of coffee. "I even have a few ideas about where to start."

"Perfect," Altair says. "Let's go find Juno."

**-/-**

**This is the last chapter I expect to get out in one day- I got AC:U today and whoosh there goes all my free time. But since people seemed to like the first chapter, I figured I would go ahead and put this up, even though that means there'll probably be a longer gap before chapter three.**

**Side note! Speaking of AC:U, if anyone reading this happens to be playing on PS4 and wants to do the co op with me, please drop me a PM or add me on PSN (my username's pangearaptor). I have no friends and it looks cool.**


	3. Chapter 3

They wait just long enough for Rebecca to have a quick nap and an even quicker shower. After that, they sit down for what Rebecca terms a "war council".

"That seems dramatic," Altair objects, but Rebecca waves away his concern.

"Doesn't matter," she says dismissively. "What matters now is finding Juno."

"Right," Altair says. "Well, the one thing we know for sure is that Juno isn't tied to the temple anymore, but we don't know what form she's in now. She could still be a hologram, like she has been, or she could have an actual body now."

"You think she could… grow a new body, or something?"

"I don't know," Altair says. "It seems impossible, but _all_ first civilization technology seems impossible."

"Fair point," Rebecca says, but she makes a face. "That makes things more difficult. I hadn't thought of her having a body." She reaches for her laptop and pops it open to point at various programs as she rattles on in a technobabble Altair can't follow. Most of what she's showing him makes absolutely no sense to Altair. He's been in this time for almost two decades now, and he's about as familiar with computers as the average person, but Rebecca is working on a whole other level.

"Slow down," he says. "I'm not following you."

"Sorry," Rebecca says. "I got excited." She sighs and starts over. "What I've been thinking is that a hologram is basically a projection from a computer. That means if Juno _is _still a hologram, she needs to be connected to some computer somewhere. I can set something up to scan likely sites for similarities to what we saw in the temple."

"Sounds good," Altair says. "But you don't seem optimistic."

"I'm not!" Rebecca says. "I didn't think about what would happen if she has an actual body, because obviously then she wouldn't need to be so attached to any computers, and I have no idea where to start looking."

She looks so crushed by her own lack of forethought that Altair wants to offer some help, and then abruptly realizes that he can. "I think I know a way we can track her down, even if she does have a body of her own."

"Yea?"

"I know a guy," Altair says, and Rebecca gives an undignified snort of laughter in response.

"You know a guy?" she repeats. "What are we, the mafia?"

"Ever heard of a corporation called Blume?" Altair asked.

"No."

"They do… security," Altair said. "It's actually a lot more complicated, and they're not the nicest people on the planet, but they have this really advanced facial recognition software. It's kind of worryingly good, actually, and I wouldn't go to them for help even if the world depended on it."

"It does," Rebecca says.

"True. But like I said… I know a guy." She laughs, and Altair allows himself a tiny smile. "He's sort of a stereotypical disgruntled ex-employee."

"But he still has access?"

"He did the last time we spoke," Altair says. "Not legally, of course."

"Perfect," Rebecca says. "How do you know that guy, anyway?"

"I met him when we first came to this time," Altair explains. "Honestly, I met a lot of… interesting people while I was looking for the modern assassins." Because he's learned by now that finding the assassins should be the first thing he does when he gets to a new century.

"Lucky for us, I guess," Rebecca says.

"I'll get in touch with him," Altair says. "And you'll let me know if you what you've done turns up anything?"

"Of course."

"And in the meantime, we'll travel," All these algorithms and computer programs are good, but he's wary of trusting them completely. As much of a long shot as it is to think they could just stumble on Juno by chance, it's better than sitting around and doing nothing.

"Sounds good," Rebecca says. She starts to close her laptop, but then something seems to catch her attention, and she hesitates. "Um… there's something else."

"What?"

"It's not about Juno," Rebecca says. "But, um… before he died, Desmond told me that you wanted to know what happened to you in this timeline."

"Well-" He's spent most of his adult life trying to learn exactly that. "Yes."

"I have the animus footage from when Desmond was at Abstergo," Rebecca said. "Lucy brought it with her and I kept it after she… well, you know."

"Died," Altair says bluntly. Lucy had been a templar and a traitor, and Altair feels very little regret for her death.

"Yes," Rebecca says. "But the point is, I thought you might like to see it."

"Sure," he says. "Only we've already been here way too long. I'll sit down and watch it once we're moving."

-/-

The first place they go is California. Altair knows Ezio's had better than average luck finding precursor artifacts out there, so it seems like a good place to start looking. But as eager as Altair had been to leave, being at the airport makes him nervous and unhappy. So much so that Rebecca notices.

"What's wrong with you?" she asks.

"Nothing."

"Come on." Rebecca crosses her arms and frowns with surprising force. "We're going to be working together for a while, and secrets don't seem like a great starting point."

"Fine," Altair says, after a lengthy pause. "The truth is, I hate flying."

"You… hate flying," Rebecca says, obviously trying not to laugh. "You have wings."

"Yes," Altair says. "I'd noticed, actually. That's… kind of the problem. Flying with wings and flying in a giant metal tube feel completely different. Every time I'm in one I feel like it's going to fall out of the sky because it just feels wrong. It's like…" he struggles for words. "Like growing a third leg and trying to run. Just a completely different way of moving."

"Are you going to be okay?" Rebecca asks. "That sounds… really not fun."

"I'll manage," Altair says. "I've done it before."

"Well, good."

"Yea."

Rebecca bites her lip, looks down at her feet, and then back up at Altair. "Speaking of flying, actually… I had a question."

"So ask."

"I haven't seen you fly in a while," Rebecca says. "Before, when we were in the temple, you guys were in the air like every chance you got. But I haven't even seen your wings in weeks. I guess I'm just a little worried."

"There's no reason to be worried," Altair says. "I guess I've been flying a little less, but I've also been busy."

"Well I guess you know best," Rebecca says.

"I do," Altair says, and his tone is sharp.

"Alright!" Rebecca raises her eyebrows. "Consider the matter closed. I won't ask again."

They sit in silence for a while, as normal airport business goes on around them. Then Altair sighs. He's still a bundle of nerves. "Can I borrow your laptop while we're on the plane?" he asks. "I could use the distraction, and I still want to see that animus footage."

"Yea," Rebecca says. She sounds unhappy with him, and Altair winces. He doesn't apologize, though, and she doesn't say anything else as she passes over the laptop. In fact, they don't say anything for a while. The footage of Desmond's early days in the animus is… Altair doesn't have the word for it. There are hours and hours of footage, days even, and Altair doesn't skip a single second. He'd expected the interest to come in seeing his own life, and how it would have been different without the wings and the time travel.

But he barely pays attention to that. Instead, he catches himself searching for signs of Desmond. Every time he sees… himself stumble or hesitate when he shouldn't, or look around Masyaf like he's seeing it for the first time, Altair realizes this really is Desmond he's seeing, and something inside him seems to clench painfully. It's like having a wound ripped open again and again, but Altair can't tear his eyes away.

The worst parts are when Desmond is stuck in loading screens, waiting for the simulation to fully build. During those times, Desmond seems the most himself, more like he's just wearing a costume than fully inhabiting Altair's skin. During these times, he'll have conversations with Lucy or Vidic, who manifest as invisible voices on the video. For whatever reason, he sounds like himself then, and that is very difficult to hear. But he manages to keep it together (somehow), whereas if he'd seen this footage a week ago he would have lost it completely. So maybe he is making progress.

"Altair?" Rebecca says after a couple hours, and he looks up at her, startled to remember that he's still in the airport, in a crowd of people, waiting for a plane. "We're boarding now."

He nods and shuts off the laptop- electronics, of course, aren't allowed during takeoff, so it'll be a while before he can see any more. And anyway, he probably needs the break. "Thanks."

"You know…" They're in line now, waiting behind a family with three tiny, noisy children. "It's hard for me, too. I mean, Desmond was a friend, not family, but it's still so hard to believe he's gone. So if you ever want to talk more-"

"I'll keep that in mind," Altair says, and then sighs. "As long as we survive the metal flying deathtrap."

The mother of the family in front of them- who has been busily quieting her youngest offspring, who is apparently terrified of flying- shoots him a dirty look at his words, but Altair doesn't mind. Seeing Desmond again- even if it had hurt- had been good too, and Rebecca's offer means more than it probably should. Despite the upcoming plane trip, he catches himself feeling optimistic for the first time since Desmond's death.

-/-

The flight goes about as well as Altair could have hoped. They take off exactly on time, have no turbulence at all, and even land half an hour early. They find a cheap place to stay (one that fully satisfies Altair's need for security and defensibility) and start their search.

They agree when they start that they won't stay more than a week in any one place before moving on. Staying in one place too long raises the likelihood that they will be found, and their already almost nonexistent chances of getting to Juno will get worse. On their agreed upon last day in California, Rebecca suggests they could cover more area with a bird's eye view.

"Bird's eye," she repeats, emphasizing the 'bird'.

Altair waves her away. "I understood you the first time," he says. "You're not really all that subtle."

"But seriously," Rebecca says. "Why don't you just-"

"I don't want to fly in such a crowded area," Altair says. "We're in the middle of a city. There's too much chance of being seen." Rebecca gives him a look but says nothing, even though the excuses are starting to wear thin. For both of them- Altair can't even explain to himself why he won't fly anymore, only that something doesn't seem right. Just the thought of flight makes him feel sick and heavy, like every limb has been filled with lead.

"So then climb," Rebecca says, and there's just a trace of confusion in her face and voice as they go their separate ways.

It's been a while since Altair's done any serious climbing. There's never been much point, when wings can do the job so much better. The raining from his childhood serves him well, though, and his muscles remember what to do and how to do it. Before long, he's moving confidently, always on the lookout for Juno but not really expecting to find her. This is easy and familiar, and Altair grins as an eagle flies past him, so close it almost hits him. This is mindless busy work, and Altair allows himself to get lost in the rhythm of the movement.

Possibly too lost- he doesn't realize he's made a mistake until it's far too late to do anything. He's already reaching for a handhold that's too far away to grasp, and there's a sick feeling of falling, falling without control, and he knows he should spread his wings and save himself but his mind is full of the memory of Desmond's corpse with its broken wings-

And then he lands, and everything is pain. He's hit the ground hard and something in his leg snaps, and the back of his head hits pavement so hard that his vision swims. He doesn't pass out, but the pain is so intense he wishes that he had.

It's while he's still trying to blink his vision back to normal that he hears hurried footsteps running toward him. "Shit," a voice says, and that's how Altair knows he must have hit his head harder than he'd thought, because the voice is Desmond's. Weirdly echoing and far away, like he's only half there. "Dad, what are you _doing_?"

Then he hears wings, and a second voice, with the same echo he'd heard in Desmond's. This one sounds vaguely familiar, like one Altair had heard a long time ago and almost forgotten. "What happened?"

"I think he fell," Desmond says, and Altair feels light, ghostly hands checking him over for injuries. "But he'll live."

"Then come on," the second voice says.

"But- we can't stay?"

The other voice hesitates, and then says, "Only a couple minutes."

Desmond lets out a long, frustrated sigh, and speaks all in a rush. "So, I'm sorry my death hit you so hard, but um-" he laughs, nervously. "Trust me, it's even harder for me. Please stop taking risks like this, okay? I'm working really hard to get back to you, and I want you to still be alive when I make it home."

"Desmond-"

"Yea, I know," he grumbles, and Altair feels him draw away.

And after that- silence. After another minute or two, Altair's vision starts to gradually come back, and he sits up, ignoring the way his head swims from the sudden motion. There's nothing there- of course there isn't. But even though it had been a hallucination, a desperate invention of a badly knocked head, the words won't leave his memory.

Desmond had said he was trying to come home.

Later, when he meets back up with Rebecca to head out of the city, she'll comment on his broken leg (with a quickly improvised splint), and the bruising all down his back (bandaged the best he could manage on his own), and the swelling on his head (still throbbing slightly), and sigh and shake her head. But she won't say anything about the fact that he's spent the rest of the day flying again, even though he can see the _I told you so_ in her expression.

"I wouldn't have guessed it," she says. "But it looks like falling off a building was exactly what you needed."

Altair laughs. "It looks like it was," he says. That or Desmond, but… well, he's not planning to mention that to Rebecca just now. Or ever, really. He finally feels like himself again, and he doesn't want to point out that it's just because he happened to hear something that hadn't really been there.

Overhead, an eagle screeches, and Altair looks up to see a pair of them soaring by.

**-/-**

**I'm going to stop giving estimates about when I'll have new chapters up. I said I wasn't going to do daily updates, and here's chapter three. Turns out I got kind of excited about Desmond's cameo.**

**Also- the Blume mention is a Watch Dogs reference. That doesn't make this a crossover, I'm not planning to bring it up again. Just thought it would work well here, and there's a ton of AC references in Watch Dogs anyway so it works.**


	4. Chapter 4

**One Month Later**

**February, 2013**

**-/-**

"So it sounds like Altair's finally healed from his fall," Shaun says, tossing his phone onto his cot on the corner of the tiny tent. "Probably could have used a couple more weeks of rest, but apparently that's not going to happen."

Ezio grins from his own cot, but doesn't open his eyes. They've been on the site of an archeological dig in Egypt for two weeks now, staying on the edges and waiting to see what comes out of the ground. This is a likely precursor site, and they'd come here on a lead only to find a team from Switzerland already hard at work looking for Egyptian artifacts. After a hasty consultation, they'd gotten themselves hired onto the dig- mostly doing physical labor, but they'll still be the first to know if anything interesting turns up. And for once they're not doing the looking themselves, which is a nice break after three weeks in Bulgaria, a month in Greece, and a freezing four days in Greenland.

"Just as long as he's doing better," Ezio says. "Heard from Connor or Haytham lately?"

"Connor called a couple days ago," Shaun says. He'd sounded extremely annoyed about something, but more or less fine. "But I haven't heard anything from Haytham since the day he went back to the templars."

Ezio makes a disapproving noise, and Shaun rolls his eyes. They've had this argument before, and Shaun expects they'll have it again. Most of what he knows of Haytham is what he's seen in the animus, and everything from that tells him that Haytham is not a fundamentally good person. And logically, he understands that the Haytham of this century isn't that same person but…

He forces his mind away from Haytham, and lies down. It's still early, but it's hot and they've been working long hours for weeks. Shaun's just managed to start drifting to sleep when he hears something that sounds like an explosion.

Shaun rolls off his cot before his conscious mind has time to process what's just happened, but he's nowhere near as fast as Ezio. The man goes from nearly asleep to on his feet and out of the tent almost before Shaun can even get his bearings. He hesitates before following, because the worrying sounds from outside haven't stopped yet. Two or three more (smaller) explosions have followed the first, and the ground is rumbling like some giant beast waking from sleep. And there are screams, too- lots of terrified screams.

"Shaun!" Ezio yells. "Get out here!"

His voice is urgent, and that more than anything convinces Shaun that something has gone horribly wrong- Ezio is a time traveler, an accomplished assassin, and he can _fly_. Shaun's a historian with very basic combat training and a fear of blood that he will never in a million years admit to anyone (hemophobia is pretty much the most embarrassing fear he can think of for an assassin). If things are bad enough that Ezio needs _his _help, they must be very bad indeed.

He ducks out of the tent and takes one step forward. Just one. Had he gone any farther, he would have fallen into the enormous hole that's suddenly appeared in the middle of the dig site. It's a great, yawning pit, and the unexpected appearance has Shaun completely stopped in his tracks while he tries to fit it into his brain.

"Whoa," he breathes.

The hole seems to be a perfect cylinder, with sheer, vertical sides, smooth and apparently free of any manmade or natural detritus that Shaun would have expected to see in the ground. There's no sign of the dig site that had been there only a few minutes ago (swallowed by the hole, most likely), and everyone that _can _flee the area is doing so, as fast as they can.

"Well," Ezio says, as the survivor's screams fade into the distance. Shaun jumps, because the impossibility of the hole in front of him has blocked all awareness of his surroundings from his mind. "I think it's safe to say they found something."

"Yea," Shaun says weakly. "Yea, I guess you're right." He tears his eyes away from the hole and looks over at Ezio. The older assassin is crouched on the edge of the pit, shirt pulled off and wings half spread like he's ready to take flight at the slightest provocation. His expression is intense and worried, and his eyes have turned bright gold. Shaun's seen that look often enough by now to recognize it as what Ezio and the others call 'eagle vision'. He sort of understands what it does, but it still creeps him out every single time he sees it. There's something about it that's just… eerie.

Ezio's eyes almost seem to glow as he looks up at Shaun, and his face is transformed by the effect. At moments like this, he looks barely human, like a bird of prey about to go in for the kill. Some dim, animal instinct in Shaun knows to fear that look, and he shivers.

But Ezio seems completely unaware of the effect he's having on Shaun. He turns back to his examination of the hole, and says, "There's something down there."

"Oh come on," Shaun scoffs. "You can't possibly see all the way down there." All he can see is blackness, going down and down and down, he doesn't know how far. He's about to tell Ezio to stop pretending he knows what he's talking about, when he remembers the weird glow in the man's eyes. And he wonders…

Ezio doesn't answer, just drops into the hole and snaps his wings open to control his fall. It's too tight of a space for him to really fly, but there's enough space that he manages to slow down before vanishing into the darkness.

That just leaves Shaun on the surface, alone with his own thoughts and more worried than he cares to admit. He knows for an absolute fact that he's smarter than Ezio (in fact, he's firmly convinced that he's smarter than most people), but that doesn't help much at times like this. There's no way anyone could get down there without wings, and Shaun will never have those.

Not that he wants them, of course. That would be- well, it would be weird, wouldn't it? And he would look like a complete idiot, walking around with a pair of wings he doesn't know how to use. But-

He's seen them fly. Altair, Ezio, Haytham, Connor, Desmond- every single one of them, no matter what they're doing or how stressed they are, as soon as they're in the air it's like everything is okay again. And Shaun would have liked to know how that feels, even if it's just for a little while.

-/-

Ezio comes back up about ten minutes later, looking completely confused. "You need to get down there," he says. "I have no idea what I'm looking at."

"How am I supposed to get down there?" Shaun asks, more testily than he'd meant. "Not all of us have wings."

"You can swim, can't you?" Ezio asks, and Shaun nods. "There's water on the bottom."

"Are you crazy?"

"Take a leap of faith," Ezio says. "You're an assassin, you must know how-"

"I don't, okay?" Shaun snaps. "The assassins haven't required a leap of faith for like a hundred and fifty years-"

That's when Ezio pushes him.

There _is _water at the bottom, which means Shaun ends his fall wet, terrified, and bruised, but technically still alive. He breaks the surface gasping for breath and cursing Ezio, but by the time he's reached the edge, Shaun has completely forgotten his anger, distracted by something far more interesting.

There's a hallway just in front of him, short and narrow but covered in golden lines of pure light. They pulse gently, reminding Shaun unavoidably of a beating heart, like this is something really alive. He watches it for a long while, open mouthed and in awe, as the pulsing continues. It's not until several minutes later that he realizes there's something else, a quiet, urging whisper that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere and makes it very difficult to stay still. Shaun can't understand a single word, but he feels the whispers telling him to come forward. He clenches his fists and refuses to take so much as a single step.

"Creepy, isn't it?" Ezio asks, and Shaun jumps a little. That's the _second _time in less than an hour that Ezio's managed to sneak up on him.

"It's… different," Shaun says. "It has to be precursor, but… it's not like the other places we've seen."

"It's better defended, definitely," Ezio says. "There must have been some kind of trap over the entrance, and when the dig started to go deeper-"

"That triggered the explosions," Shaun finishes. "Everyone nearby gets vaporized, the entrance caves in, and we find what we're looking for." But the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth- he's tired of people dying because they don't know where they're going or what they're looking for, and he can tell by the darkening look on Ezio's face that the same thought has occurred to him.

"Well," he says after a long pause. "We're here now. Let's not waste the opportunity."

So in they go.

The hallway runs straight as an arrow for quite a while. The walls gradually change from loose dirt to solid, smooth stone, and then gradually to something that looks more manufactured, more like what Shaun's used to seeing from first civilization ruins. The whispering gets louder, but the words still aren't in any language he recognizes so he does his best to ignore them.

The light gets brighter, and finally the hallway opens into a room not much larger than the hallway had been. The light that had been on the walls continues here, twisting into complex shapes that Shaun knows he will spend hours poring over later. The two strands meet up on the back wall, twisting into a pattern so large it takes up the entire space from floor to ceiling. "I have absolutely no idea what this is," he says.

Ezio nods and wanders to the left side of the room, tracing the light with one finger. The whispers get louder, and Shaun shudders. He's really starting to dislike this place. "Why go through all the trouble to build this?" he wonders aloud. "And then just hide it under all that sand?"

"Maybe something was here once," Ezio says. "Or they were going to put something here but never got around to it."

"Hmm." Shaun shakes his head. "This doesn't seem like the kind of place people would just forget about."

"Then what-"

He puts his hand onto the light on the right side of the room, and then stops talking because the second he touches the light he feels like his hand is burning. He tries to pull himself away, but it's like his skin is glued to the wall, and the pain is spreading up his arm very quickly. Ezio gives a grunt of pain from behind Shaun, and he assumes the same thing is happening on the other side of the room.

The golden light slowly starts to turn red, the color from his arm toward the pattern on the back wall, and Shaun has seen enough blood in his life to recognize it now. His head feels suddenly light, and he hears something splatter onto the floor behind him, followed by the sickly sweet smell of vomit. He spares about half a second to wonder why Ezio's the one throwing up when he's the one with the fear of blood, but then the light (fully red now, with no sign of the earlier gold) pulses once, and Shaun is finally able to wrench his hand away from the light. But he overbalances in the process, and falls. His head cracks sharply on the stone ground, and he blacks out.

-/-

He wakes up in a motel somewhere, feeling somehow drained and too heavy at the same time. It's midafternoon, judging by the light coming in through the grimy window, and Ezio is sprawled on a chair on the other side of the room, fast asleep and looking pale and exhausted. When Shaun pushes himself into a sitting position, his head swims, and he groans.

Ezio shifts at the sound, and wakes up. He rubs at his face with one hand and yawns. "Careful," he says. "You lost a lot of blood before you passed out. We both did."

"What happened?" Shaun asks. "Where are we?"

"Still close to the dig site," Ezio says. "It was hard enough dragging you up after losing all that blood, I didn't want to go far."

"So that- it did take our blood," Shaun says. "Why?"

"That is something I'm really interested in finding out," Ezio says. "It just drained quite a lot of our blood, and I would really like to know what the point was." He pulls out his phone and tosses it to Ezio. "I took some pictures of the walls," he says. "After you blacked out, these showed up on the walls."

Shaun punches the passcode in, and starts scrolling through the pictures- they're all blood red (literally, apparently), and a few look vaguely familiar from glyphs he's seen at other precursor sites. "I've got pictures from most of the other places we've been to," he says, without looking up from the phone. "I can cross reference those and see if there's anything in common. They have to have some kind of meaning, and if we figure out what that meaning is, that might tell us why the place took our blood."

"Can you do it on the move?" Ezio asks. "I don't want to rush, but there was a giant explosion a couple miles from here. I want to be long gone before people start asking questions."

"Yea," Shaun says. "No problem. But what happens when people start going down there? I mean, it's a giant hole in the middle of the desert. Someone's going to notice."

Ezio shrugs. "Nothing we can do about that," he says. "But honestly, I would be surprised if anyone wants to go anywhere near a place that randomly exploded. Especially when it's in the middle of nowhere."

"Fair enough," Shaun says. "Let's go."

His laptop with the records of the other sites they've been to is back in the states, which is lucky because if they'd brought it with it would be in the bottom of a sandy hole. It takes a couple minutes of frantic texting before he finds out Connor's the only one still in the country, and almost an hour after that to convince him to e-mail all the relevant pictures.

"Someone's not in a helpful mood," Shaun grumbles when the pictures finally start coming through.

"Give him a break," Ezio says. "We get to travel the world looking for cool stuff, and he gets to deal with assassin politics."

Shaun makes a noncommittal noise and scrolls through the pictures. He's already started making notes and guesses about which symbols mean what, and the first thing he does is look to see if any of the ones in the pictures look like what he'd seen before passing out. And they do.

"What's wrong?" Ezio asks, and Shaun realizes he's looking at the pictures on his phone with an expression of absolute horror.

"Well," Shaun says, when he can force the words out. "The good news is, I can make a pretty good guess about what that room was for."

"That's good," Ezio says. "What's the bad news?"

"The glyphs on the walls there… I don't know what they all mean. But-" He holds his phone out so Ezio can see for himself. "This one means blood, that one's union, this one here is fertility…"

"And?"

"Well, taking them all together…" Shaun hesitates, because this is going to sound absolutely ridiculous. "I think the glyphs are describing a precursor marriage ceremony. The symbol for blood describes the sacrifice, like what happened when we touched the walls. Union, um... that would be the marriage part."

Ezio laughs, which seems like the wrong reaction to Shaun. "I don't think you're taking this seriously enough," he snaps. "We both know these people were completely crazy, and their technology is pretty much science fiction. It took our blood, and there's no way it was for something good."

That at least wipes the smile off Ezio's face, but it doesn't make Shaun feel any better. He's still thinking about the last symbol he'd pointed out to Ezio, the one that means _fertility. _And he's very worried.

**-/-**

**I promise I'm going somewhere with this. It might take a while to get there, but if all goes well it will be important eventually.**

**Also- I deleted this chapter because of I'm not sure if its too weird or not, then decided to put it back up until I make a final decision (preferably when it's not 1:30 in the morning and my brain is slightly more rational). It might get deleted again later and then replaced with something completely different or it might not, a decision has not yet been made.**

**Also also (aka update... three, I think?): hemophobia and homophobia are absolutely not the same word, but my spellcheck thinks they are. Thanks to the reviewer who caught that.**


	5. Chapter 5

They have no leads to follow and nowhere to go, so they go back to where they'd started. The house in upstate New York where they'd all gathered after Desmond died is empty now, and after what happened in the desert, they need at least a short break before they move on again. Frustratingly, Ezio doesn't seem at all bothered.

"So is this our honeymoon?" he asks when they first walk in the door.

"Shut up," Shaun sighs. He's still convinced he's right to be worried about this, but he is starting to regret telling Ezio. The man's done nothing but crack stupid jokes and they're wearing very thin.

Ezio just laughs at the obvious annoyance in Shaun's voice and heads upstairs, calling down something about getting some sleep as he goes. Shaun waits until he hears the door close before launching into a passionate but mumbled rant about certain assassins and their stupid refusal to take anything seriously.

He spends the rest of the evening stretched out on the bed in his own room, thinking things through. As much as he would like to believe that this is no big deal- the first civilization equivalent of getting drunk in Vegas and being married by an Elvis impersonator- he can't quite convince himself that's true. The thing he keeps going back to is the trap that had triggered the explosion. There must have been something important in there to warrant an explosion that large, and the only thing down there had been the room with the marriage ceremony.

Eventually, he gives up trying to figure it out, and falls asleep.

The night starts off badly. Shaun wakes from nightmares several times, but has no memory at all of what his dreams had been about. By early morning, Shaun's groggy and more tired than he had been when he went to bed. He's just started considering sleeping pills when he feels something warm and solid drop into bed next to him. Normally, this is exactly the kind of thing that would start alarm bells going off in his head, but tonight, for some reason, it doesn't. Instead, Shaun falls almost instantly into a deep, untroubled sleep.

He doesn't know how long he's asleep, but it feels like hours, and when he wakes it's slowly, gradually, to a feeling of complete and total comfort. It's not until he moves, still half asleep and trying to burrow deeper into the warmth of his bed, that Shaun realizes he's not alone.

Suddenly he's wide awake and horribly aware of the _feeling _of a presence all around him- of the arm circling his waist, of the soft breath on the back of his neck, and of the quiet, sleeping noises in his ear. It would have been a good way to wake up, if he'd gone to bed with someone he cared about the night before. But he hadn't, and Shaun's mind leaps to the (horrifying) only possible conclusion.

He flips over in the bed, and finds his face inches from Ezio's. He's expecting to feel angry at the sheer invasiveness of what's happening here, and he does. But he's not at all ready for the wave of physical, aching _need _that rolls over him suddenly, and he can't control the way his body curls into Ezio's even as he tries to pull away.

The movement jostles Ezio awake, and Shaun winces as surprise, confusion, and then embarrassment chase each other across the man's face. "So…" Ezio says, when they've both had time to fully absorb the wrongness of what's going on here. "I think you might have had a point. We have a problem."

-/-

They spend the morning apart, because it's too awkward to stay in the same room for long. Shaun makes a token effort at getting work done, but quickly gives up. His mind keeps drifting back toward last night and Ezio, and after a brief struggle, he lets it happen.

When it comes right down to it, the weirdest part of all this is that he is in no way attracted to Ezio. After over a month on their own, Shaun supposes they could be called friends, but that's as far as their relationship goes. Even this morning, even as every cell in his body was screaming how badly he needed to be close to the other man, there had been no attraction at all, neither romantic nor sexual. It's just that Ezio has suddenly become something his body needs on a basic level, the same as food and oxygen.

It's obviously because of what happened in the desert. He can't explain how or why, but somehow that event has… (Shaun struggles for the right word) connected them. And they have no way of knowing how much farther this will go. It's been only a few days, and already they're waking up in bed together. He doesn't want to think about what's going to be happening in a week, a month, a year… It's worrying, to say the least. Maybe things will level off, but maybe they won't, and so armed with this new worry Shaun goes looking for Ezio.

It's unnervingly easy to find him- Shaun can feel every fiber of his being aligning itself toward where Ezio is, like some kind of mental compass. It's easy enough to follow that feeling, and Shaun finds Ezio on the roof, apparently lost in thought, wings angled upward just enough to let the wind run over his feathers. He looks down at Shaun as soon as he walks to the side of the building, and comes down at once to meet him.

"We need to talk," Shaun says, and Ezio nods.

"I've been thinking," he says.

"Me too."

But neither of them goes on, until eventually Ezio laughs. "I can't think of anything to say that doesn't make us sound like lovers."

"Which we're clearly not," Shaun says, hastily.

"Right," Ezio says, clearly relieved. "But…"

"Exactly," Shaun says. "There's always a 'but'."

"I really don't know how I ended up in your bed last night, but it won't happen again."

"Yea, it will," Shaun says, and Ezio doesn't bother arguing. Not when they're standing two feet apart and it's still not close enough. Ezio shifts his wings, tension and nerves obvious in the movement, but his smile remains firmly in place.

And suddenly it hits Shaun that he's never been able to pick up emotions from _wings_ before. He knows it's possible- Ezio had tried explaining it to him once- but Shaun hadn't really understood. At the time, it had seemed ridiculous, like looking at a person's arms to guess how they're feeling. But looking at Ezio now, he can see it for himself. And he shouldn't be able to, because he doesn't have wings, he's not part bird, but Ezio is, and that means-

"I have pieces of you in my brain," he blurts, and Ezio only looks surprised for half a second before his mouth forms a little 'oh' of surprise. No one else would have understood, but if there are pieces of Ezio in Shaun now, that means there are pieces of Shaun in Ezio as well. He follows Shaun's train of thought without apparent effort, and frowns.

"That explains some things at least," he says. "You're hemophobic?"

Shaun nods, then realizes the implications of passing on his fear of blood to a man that had been literally trained to spend his life killing people. "Sorry," he says, but Ezio waves him away.

"I think we should just agree that neither of us wanted this, and apologies are a waste of time." He scowls, and kicks at the ground so that a cascade of loose stone and rock go skittering away. "Can you imagine what precursor society must have been like?" he asks, changing the subject. "I mean, they wanted this. People must have done this voluntarily."

"Probably with people they loved," Shaun points out. "If you really loved someone, then all this would be different." Ezio makes a noncommittal noise, but Shaun suddenly has a thought. "Hang on," he says. "Back at the temple, when Desmond was still going through Connor's memories, Juno used to show up sometimes. She talked to him." He rubs at his face and sighs. "Rambled, really. I still have the recordings somewhere, but I remember that once she talked about her husband. He died during one of their failed attempts to save the world."

"And?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Shaun asks, but when Ezio just keeps looking at him like he's grown a second head, he sighs and takes several deliberate steps back. It's difficult, and almost physically painful, so that each step is a significant effort. He stops when Ezio takes a stumbling, unwilling step forward. "It's hard to leave," he says. "And harder to be left behind. So imagine that instead of a little bit of space, one of us is dead. And instead of us being two random people who accidentally did something stupid and got stuck like that, we were two people that chose to get married."

"Okay, I get it-"

"And then imagine spending thousands of years all on your own, waiting for the right person with the right DNA to come along and let you out."

"No wonder she's nuts," Ezio says. He sighs into the chill February air, and his breath puffs into a warm cloud around him. "We should go inside," he says. "It's freezing out here." He leads the way back inside, walking quickly. As he passes Shaun, one hand shoots out to grab his forearm. The movement looks completely involuntary, and Ezio mumbles an embarrassed apology without removing his hand. Shaun lets it happen without a word of complaint, because just that much of a touch makes it feel like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.

"This is going to take some getting used to," he says, and leaves it at that.

-/-

It turns out that the explosion in Egypt has attracted attention from both the assassins and templars, so Shaun and Ezio decide to stay in the safe house until everything dies down again. With Connor and Haytham doing damage control on their respective sides, the two of them have a lot of free time to fill. And a lot of adjustments to make.

The first half month or so- a time Ezio starts referring to as the Honeymoon Period, in caps- are the worst. For half a month, it's physically painful to be apart for more than a few minutes at a time. It gets pretty unlivable for a while, and Shaun's pretty sure he would have gone crazy if it had gone on much longer. Lucky for him, the effect starts to wear off after a couple weeks, although it never completely goes away. What it does instead is settle into something more livable. At the outset, it's hard to be alone, but gradually it just becomes… more comfortable to be together.

After a while, they decide it's probably safe to try separating for a while. They test the theory one Saturday morning, when Ezio goes on a day long supply run and Shaun stays in the safehouse, alone. There's still the ever present sense in the back of his head telling him where Ezio is every second they're apart, and he's tenser than usual, but mostly Shaun feels okay with the whole thing. He ignores the feelings, and while they don't exactly go away, they are manageable and that's good enough for now.

There are still changes they both need to make so they can live together without going insane. A few weeks in, they sit down and talk about boundaries. They can't help that they know things about each other that they shouldn't, but they agree not to share. That's the easy part of the agreement. Beyond that, there's the issue of touch. Any hope of maintaining distance is long gone, but neither of them wants to spend all their time groping at each other. The need to touch isn't as intense as it had been at the beginning, but ignoring the urge is still uncomfortable- like ignoring a persistent itch.

So they just kind of roll with it. Shaun gets used to Ezio's fingers brushing his arm when they pass, or the feel of the man's foot on his leg when they sit together. The urge isn't a constant force, and it's not always equally intense for both of them. Some days they barely even speak, and sometimes they're nearly inseparable.

They also accept sleeping in the same bed, although that takes a little more effort to sort out. "The only way this works is if we're both wearing clothes, and nothing… happens. We're sleeping together but we're not sleeping _together_," Shaun had said, and Ezio hadn't argued. Luckily, they don't need to be in the same bed every night. Most of the time, they can sleep just fine alone. Once or twice a week, one of them will join the other in bed, only to separate again, usually without saying anything, as soon as they wake up the next morning.

It's on one of these mornings, when Shaun is awake but Ezio is still asleep, that Shaun finally gets the courage to do something he's wanted to try for a while.

When no one else is around, it's unusual for Ezio to ever keep his wings hidden. Shaun has gotten as used to the sight of them as he has to every other oddity that's taken over his life lately, but even with all the recent touching, Shaun's always thought of Ezio's wings as a line he shouldn't cross. They're too strange, too… inhuman. It's the only part of Ezio that Shaun feels he _doesn't _understand anymore.

But on this particular morning, Shaun finds himself waking with one wing shoved over him like the world's strangest blanket. Shaun hesitates, and then sits up and rubs one hand across the feathers. Gradually his fingers drift upward, to the place where Ezio's wings meet his back. Shaun's not an expert in biology, but even he can tell that the muscle structure there is wrong, strong but not natural.

"I think this definitely counts as too much touching," Ezio says, and Shaun snatches his hand away as if he's been burned.

"Sorry."

Ezio yawns and sits up, wings curling as he stretches. "It's fine," he says, and they don't talk any more about it. But Shaun can't stop thinking- even before all this had started, he'd wanted to know everything about the wings and how they worked. Only now, he can't help wondering why he'd gotten so much from Ezio- so much random knowledge he doesn't want or need- but he hadn't gotten the one thing that would have been really nice to have.

And he isn't until that moment that he realizes how badly he wants to fly.


	6. Chapter 6

**March**

**-/-**

Connor spends almost half an hour outside William's door before making up his mind not to knock. He's still not entirely sure where they stand with one another- they haven't discussed New York, and as far as Connor knows William has no plans to do so. He doesn't much want to talk about what happened himself, so there hasn't been a reason to push. As long as William wants to pretend nothing had happened, Connor's happy enough to play along.

He doesn't much like working with the man, anyway. He's short tempered, exacting, and tends to lash out when angry. The fact that he's the most likely to hear about any first civilization activities among the assassins is the only reason Connor's there at all. That, and lately he's been too busy cleaning up messes to leave. Altair and Rebecca have managed to keep mostly quiet, but Ezio and Shaun had somehow managed to _blow up _a section of desert, and it had taken Connor and Haytham quite a lot of coordinated effort to keep the templars away and uninterested. The assassins, who were underfunded and stretched thin as it was, hadn't had the resources to investigate anyway.

"Did you need to talk about something?" William asks, and Connor sighs. He hadn't realized the man had walked up behind him while he'd been staring like an idiot at the wall. "Or is my door just that interesting?"

Connor doesn't bother to hide his distaste as he turns around to face William, who's scowling at him with equal intensity. Family resemblance, apparently. "You actually have a very uninteresting door," he said. "But I came by to tell you I'm going out of town for the weekend." He would have vastly preferred to tell William via text after he's already gone, but apparently that's no longer an option.

"Fine," William says. But he's standing in front of the hallway leading out, and he doesn't move.

"Was there something _you _wanted to talk about?" Connor asks, after a long moment of silence.

"I-" William swallows, hard. "It's March 13."

"Desmond's birthday," Connor says quietly. "I know. That's sort of why I wanted to get out of town. I… don't want to be around people right now."

William nods. "Fair enough," he says. "But I wondered if you might want to come somewhere with me, first."

"Where?" Connor asks, cautious because he does not want to be roped into running errands or carrying messages before leaving. He's been looking forward to the break this weekend will bring, even if the reason for leaving is less than ideal. Ezio and Shaun are still at the safe house, waiting for the interest in what happened in Egypt to die down. Connor has no idea what they've been doing, hanging around for almost a month in the middle of nowhere, but he's pretty sure they must be driving each other crazy by now. Connor can't imagine two people less likely to get along, and frankly it's impressive that they're not already at each other's throats.

"Well-" William hesitates again, and Connor narrows his eyes. It's definitely not like William to be so uncertain, and as little as he likes the man, he has to admit that this has him worried. Not extremely worried, admittedly, but at least slightly concerned. He reminds himself that even if he'd missed almost all of Desmond's life, he was still his father. Today is probably going to be just as hard on him as it is on the rest of them.

Eventually, though, he gets tired of waiting. "Where?" he asks again.

"The cemetery."

Connor opens and closes his mouth several times, then nods. "Of course."

-/-

There is no name carved on Desmond's headstone, no date, no sign, in fact, that anyone is buried there at all. William had offered to bury him last December, and it had seemed fair enough at the time. He'd helped bring Desmond into the world, and it had seemed somehow fitting that he be the one to bury him. This is actually the first time Connor's been to the grave, and he's kind of surprised- he'd expected a rush job in the middle of nowhere, away from prying eyes.

Instead, William had chosen to bury him in a cemetery. Probably not legally, but it lends the site a certain degree of respect that Connor appreciates. And while there is no sign that the ground has been dug up anytime in the recent past, it has been well maintained, and obviously visited frequently. But the part that really gets him is the headstone. Although calling it a headstone is admittedly pushing it a little- really it's just a rock, large but not particularly out of place. "Did you do all this?" he asks.

"Most of it," William says, and he kicks the headstone over with one foot. The underside is flat, and someone with some amount of talent at art has carved an eagle there. "I assume one of you people did that."

Connor shakes his head. "Clearly you've never seen any of us trying to be artistic," he says. "I promise, none of us would have made something that looks this good." He crouches down next to the headstone to study it more closely. There's obvious talent here, and more detail than he would have expected. "Who else knows he's buried here?"

"No one," William says, but he doesn't sound particularly worried.

"What about his mother?" Connor asks. He knows she's still in the picture, somewhere, although he doesn't know who she is or even her name.

William laughs without amusement. "She doesn't know he's dead," he says. "She doesn't even know we found him again. I couldn't tell her…" And he trails off, shoulders shaking. Connor turns away, letting him have the moment to himself. Nothing he can say will make a difference anyway, and he's more interested in the eagle carved onto the headstone.

Somehow, even though he knows he should be worried about some stranger knowing where Desmond is buried, he can't bring himself to care. There's something about the way the eagle in the carving looks- like something set free, launching itself into the air as fast as its wings can carry it- that makes him think the carver must have cared for Desmond.

They don't stay long, because the weather is still cold enough to make things miserable. Besides, they have nothing to say to one another. William leaves first, and that means Connor's the only one around to see the eagle. It swoops down to perch on Desmond's headstone like it owns the space, and tilts its head up to study Connor with uncommon intensity. Connor steps forward to shoo the bird away, but abruptly stops. This eagle looks exactly the same as the one in the carving on the headstone- there's something in the bird's eyes that just looks the same.

It's obviously just a coincidence, but Connor sighs and steps back anyway. The bird can stay as he walks away, the eagle flaps its wings, and gives a screeching cry of impatient anger that almost sounds like speech.

_Wait_

But birds don't speak, and Connor explains it away as his mind playing tricks, just the sound of the wind in the trees.

-/-

The last town on the way to the safehouse is a tiny little place called Carole. Connor has no idea who Carole is, or how she'd gotten a town named for her, but it's a nice enough place that he figures she must have done something right.

Connor's stopped in there a couple times before, and he does so again today. There's not much to do in Carole, but Connor makes a point of at least going for groceries. When they'd been in the temple, waiting for Desmond to finish in the animus, there had been nothing to eat that wasn't frozen or processed to within an inch of its life. Connor has no doubt the safehouse will be similarly stocked, and he never wants to see another microwave meal in his life.

So he buys vegetables.

"Connor?"

He's halfway through the store when he hears Haytham behind him, and turns around. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Haytham shrugs. "Ezio told me you were coming down for the weekend, so I thought I'd get some time off, too. I said I was going to see family, and no one asked any questions, so… surprise."

"That's great," Connor says, and he means it. His communications with Haytham since they all split up have been coded and brief, so getting the chance to see Haytham this weekend cheers Connor up immensely.

"Altair and Rebecca might be flying in later," Haytham goes on. "We're overdue for a meeting, I guess. We need to get back on the same page again, and find out how everyone's doing."

"Speaking of that, how's…" Connor hesitates, remembering abruptly that they're still in a public place. "…your new job?"

"Awful," Haytham says, and doesn't elaborate. Connor doesn't press, but he notices the look on Haytham's face. And he worries

They drive to the safehouse together, at least as far as the road will take them. After that, they walk. Carefully. Someone has laid traps all along every obvious approach to the house, so the trip is slow going. Connor can't pretend he minds much, though. Even after years in this high technology time, the kind of basic, handmaid defense here is still the kind of security he trusts the most.

They reach the house at last, only to find Shaun and Ezio in the middle of a flaming row. Haytham hears it first, when they're still a fair distance away, and puts one hand out to stop Connor from moving any closer.

"What?" Connor asks.

"I want to hear what they're saying."

"Are we spying on them?" Connor demands, voice rising. But Haytham only shushes him, so Connor rolls his eyes and stays where he is. The shouting is loud but muffled, and Connor can't make out more than a sporadic word or two. Haytham is apparently having the same problem, because he starts to move closer. Connor stays where he is for a second or two, then gives up and slides after Haytham on silent feet.

"…long do you think this is going to stay a secret?" Ezio is saying (yelling) as they draw closer to the house. "Do you really think no one's going to notice?"

"What, you want to tell them?" Shaun demands.

"Yes!"

"Really?" Shaun snaps, and even though he sounds louder and angrier than Connor's ever heard him, he still manages to make the words sarcastic. "And how exactly do you want to start _that _conversation? 'Hey, guys, you'll never guess what happened in Egypt!'?"

"Better than lying to everyone," Ezio says. "Listen, what happened only happened because we were looking for stuff on precursor society, which is exactly what we were supposed to be doing!"

"How is any of _this _supposed to help kill Juno?" Shaun asks. "Face it, we did something stupid, we screwed up, and telling everyone is not going to make anything better!"

There's an extremely long pause, and then Ezio forces out a "Fine" that sounds extremely reluctant.

There's nothing more after that, so Connor looks over at Haytham, eyes wide. "What did they do?" he hisses, but quietly so they won't be overheard.

"Nothing good, apparently," Haytham answers.

"So what do we do?" Connor asks. "Do we confront them?"

"After what we just heard?" Haytham shakes his head, but he looks less than certain. "I mean, maybe Ezio would say something, but Shaun's just going to dig his heels in deeper."

"Maybe they'll change their minds," Connor says, without much real hope. He sighs and shakes his head. "I hope they know what they're doing."


	7. Chapter 7

The feeling in the house is tense and dangerous when Connor and Haytham finally make it inside. Shaun and Ezio make absolutely no effort to hide that they've been fighting, but offer no explanation for it. Finally, clearly growing impatient with the whole charade, Haytham starts pushing.

"So how have things been going for you two?" he asks, in a tone that overly casual.

"Fine," Ezio says.

"Just peachy," Shaun mutters.

"Find anything interesting?"

"Not yet," Ezio says, after a long pause in which he and Shaun glare at one another.

"What about Egypt?" Haytham asks.

"Nothing important," Shaun says, and that more than anything makes Connor concerned because it's so obviously a lie.

"Wait a minute," he says. "Right after the explosion you called me-" he points at Shaun. "Remember? You said you'd found something important and you needed the files off your laptop right away. I had to come all the way out here-"

"Well I'm sorry I inconvenienced you," Shaun says. "Something blew up, and I overreacted. That's all."

And no matter how much they push, neither Ezio nor Shaun will say nothing else. After half an hour or so of this, Haytham shoots Connor a pointed, exasperated look and announces that he's going to take his stuff upstairs. Connor follows.

"Something's wrong," Haytham says. "And don't pretend you didn't see it, because-"

"No," Connor interrupts. "You're right. Something happened, they're not going to tell us what it is, and it's obviously bad." He hesitates, then says, "We need to figure it out," just as Haytham asks, "What do we do?"

Connor tilts his head, listening to the faint conversation he can hear echoing up from the first floor. It doesn't sound like an argument, but they head to the stairs anyway, listening in on the second conversation in the same day.

"…already know something's wrong," Ezio says. He sounds angry. "I told you this wasn't going to work. I don't know why we even tried."

"You're going to tell them," Shaun says.

"It's not that bad-"

"I know," Shaun groans. "But… I don't want Rebecca to find out."

"Oh," Ezio says, after a very long pause. "Because you love her."

Shaun splutters something in nervous denial that makes his feelings so obvious he might as well have just said yes. Of course, they've been overwhelmingly obvious to everyone except Rebecca for a while, so Connor just sights at the denial. Next to him, Haytham shakes his head.

"Fine," Ezio says. "We keep it secret." He sounds a lot less angry than he had earlier, like Shaun's finally convinced him to come around to his way of thinking. "Because I don't want to get in the way of whatever's going on between you two."

"Nothing's going on!" Shaun protests.

"Yea, I know," Ezio snorts. "And nothing's _going _to happen if she finds out, so we won't tell anyone until you're ready."

"Thanks," Shaun mutters, and apparently that's the end of the conversation because Connor doesn't hear anything else for a while.

Haytham swears quietly but with feeling. "Bloody romantic," he says. "Honestly, we were that close to finding out the easy way, and then suddenly all this turns into a bad chick flick."

Connor hits him in the shoulder and stands up. So what if this isn't going to happen the easy way. Nothing ever really does in his life. "Don't be ridiculous," he says. "_All_ chick flicks are bad."

Haytham laughs, but the sound is quick and cuts off quickly. "I don't like this," he says. "I don't like that we're spying on them, and I don't like that they're lying to us."

"And I don't like it either," Connor says. "But… hang on a second. You said Altair and Rebecca are coming in later, right?"

"They're supposed to be," Haytham says. "Why?"

"We could just let Altair talk to him," Connor says. "If anyone can convince them to come clean, it'll be him."

"Yes," Haytham says, with a sigh of relief. "Yes, I like that idea a lot."

-/-

But this strategy means that there will be hours or days of waiting before they get any news, and that means pretending that nothing is wrong until they finally show up. Luckily, there's plenty to distract them until then. Regardless of what secrets they're all keeping from each other, it's still been months since they were last together, and there's a lot to catch up on. Not big things- those are apparently off limits- but the little things that are more than enough for now. They stay up late, talking too much and too long. By the time they finally all drift upstairs and to bed, Connor has almost (but not quite) forgotten that something's wrong here.

He sleeps well, and wakes later than he'd planned the next morning. He's used to being the first one awake in any given group of people, but today when he makes it out of his room, he finds both Shaun and Ezio already awake, and-

And…

Connors stands at the railing and looks down at the main floor, completely still and silent, for what seems like an age. This time, he's not intentionally trying to spy, it's just that his brain can't process what his eyes are telling him. After a while he turns around, goes into Haytham's room, and prods him awake.

"They're cuddling," he says, and for a minute Haytham just stares.

"Sorry," he says. "I don't think I heard that right."

"They're-" Connor shakes his head. "Come on. It'll be easier if you just see it for yourself."

So they leave the room again, and stand (again) in a place where they can look down at the other two. At the far end of the room, Ezio and Shaun are sitting together on a couch, in a position that is somehow both intimate and distant at the same time. The couch is more than long enough for both of them to sit comfortably, with space between them, but for some reason they've chosen to sit as close together as possible. Shaun is sitting with his legs curled under him, nose buried in a book that looks like it was written before Connor was born, and leaning into Ezio like it's the most natural thing in the world. Ezio, for his part, looks half asleep (he's never been a morning person). He uses one hand to flip through something on his phone, while the fingers of the other hand twist absentmindedly through Shaun's hair.

"What is that?" Haytham hisses at Connor. "I thought-"

But Ezio starts to glance up in their general direction, and Connor grabs Haytham by the forearm and pulls him away. When they're safely shut away again, Haytham starts over. "So they're, what, dating now?"

"No way," Connor says.

Haytham snorts. "It definitely looked like that to me," he says. "I mean, you don't crawl into someone's lap if you're in a platonic relationship-"

"What about what we heard yesterday?" Connor asks. "Shaun clearly wants a relationship with Rebecca, so why would he do this with Ezio?"

"Because people are irrational and make poor decisions," Haytham says.

"Okay, fine," Connor says. "Then what does this have to do with precursor secrets? It definitely sounds like something happened in Egypt that they're not telling us, and it sounds more serious than some… secret relationship."

"Then what is actually going on here?" Haytham demands, crossing his arms and glaring daggers at Connor, like it's _his _fault Ezio and Shaun are keeping secrets. "This is insane! We shouldn't have to spy and sneak around and act like we're in enemy territory. Not here. Not with people we are supposed to be able to trust."

"Then go talk to them," Connor snaps. "Because I don't know. It just doesn't add up."

A door opens somewhere downstairs, and then closes again. Connor gets up, walks halfway to the door, and then stops. He can hear voices downstairs now, Ezio and Shaun, and Altair and Rebecca too.

"Well, this is about to get interesting," Haytham says, and together they hurry out of the room.

Ezio and Shaun are both standing by the time they make it to the main floor, looking like they've just jumped off the couch. Rebecca is by the door with her arms crossed, and Altair mostly just looks confused.

"So… what's this?" Rebecca asks, and she doesn't exactly manage to hide the hurt in her voice.

"Nothing," Shaun says. "Becca, I swear-"

"Didn't look like nothing," she says. "And it doesn't matter. I just thought that we… never mind." Shaun starts to call after her, but Rebecca rushes past him, upstairs and out of sight before anyone can stop her. Connor gets a good look at her face as she pushes past him, and that is the exact moment that he decides this has gone far enough. Haytham's right- they need to be able to trust one another.

"One of you," he says, into the sudden and utter silence of the room. "Needs to start explaining things." He's very aware that everyone is looking at him, and that he's not used to being the one making these ultimatums. He narrows his eyes and tries to hide his nervousness at being the center of attention. "Something happened, in Egypt. What was it?"

"Nothing," Shaun says, but Ezio frowns at him.

"Give it up," he says. "I told you we wouldn't be able to keep this a secret."

"What secret?" Altair demands. "Will somebody please explain what's going on here?"

Shaun rubs the back of his neck, nervous and clearly unhappy, and then one hand shoots out in a motion that looks almost compulsive, grabbing Ezio's hand in a death grip that the other man returns.

"Fine," he says. "Um… I guess there's only one way to start this."

"Please don't," Shaun sighs, but his shoulders are already drooping in clear resignation.

"Technically, we're married."

-/-

The next couple hours are excruciatingly painful for everyone involved. Once Ezio has backed up enough to explain about the accidental blood sacrifice turned marriage ritual, Altair insists on going over every element of their unconventional relationship. In extreme detail.

"I get why you didn't want to say anything," Haytham says when they've finally run out of things to talk about and questions to ask. "That sounds like it sucks."

"Blunt but accurate," Shaun mutters.

"It's not that bad when you get used to it," Ezio says at more or less the same time.

"You haven't let go of each other since this conversation started," Haytham says. "You _can't_. How is that something you can 'get used to'?"

"…today's a bad day," Ezio admits.

"Yea," Rebecca calls from the second floor. They all look up to see her leaning against the railing, looking long faced but more composed than she had been when Connor had last seen her. "Seems like it." She focuses in on Shaun, and adds, "I want to talk to you. Alone, if you can manage it."

Shaun disentangles himself from Ezio with a grimace of pain, and after a mumbled goodbye he hurries upstairs. Nobody bothers trying to stop him, because there's really nowhere farther they can go from here. In fact, none of them stay long. Altair rubs at his face and yawns before wandering upstairs for some sleep, and Ezio heads to his own room without a word of explanation. Connor thinks he might just be trying to hide from the rest of them. That only leaves Connor and Haytham alone on the main floor- at least until Haytham sighs and glances out the window. It's a beautiful day, clear and warmer than the past few weeks have been, and Connor is quick to agree when Haytham suggests getting out and flying for a while.

Flight is simple. It's easy, instinctive, and more than anything, freedom. By this point, Connor has had wings for so long he can barely remember what it was like to be tied to the earth the way most people are. When everything else is turning inside out- and it all too often is- flying is the only thing that keeps Connor from losing it, and lashing out at everyone around him. Or running as far as he can in the other direction. Some days he feels like doing one, and some days he feels like doing the other. Without his wings, he might have given in and done something stupid years ago.

He would have been happy to stay in the air all day, but it isn't long before Haytham lands and gestures at Connor to do the same. They're nowhere near the safehouse by now- the wind and their wings have carried them miles away. "What's wrong?" Connor asks.

"I…" Haytham crosses his arms and lets his wings hang down around his naked torso. "How long do you think we'll be doing this?" he asks.

"Doing what?"

"All this," Haytham says. "I'm sick of being at Abstergo. I don't mean to sound like I'm complaining, but I-"

It took Connor a second to realize Haytham was crying. He's never seen the man break down quite like this, and he isn't sure what to do. "Something happened," he says. "What was it?"

"The animus project," Haytham says. "It's still going ahead, they've expanded it, and guess where they've put me?" Only he doesn't wait for Connor to guess, just pushes ahead like he can't stop the words from coming out. "God knows why, it's not like I have any relevant experience. But every single day, I have to watch people climb into the animus like it's perfectly okay. Because- did I tell you?- they're making it into some kind of game. An 'entertainment' division. Dozens of people crawling through important DNA in the animus, pulling out the interesting parts for some stupid video game, all while doing the templars' work for them, tracking down precursor sites and information. And I can't do anything."

"Haytham-"

"I was going to say something," Haytham says. "But then there was all that… whatever it was with Ezio and Shaun, and-"

Connor hugs him impulsively. Normally he wouldn't even think about doing something like that, not in a million years, because he's not great with personal contact, and anyway he's never been _exactly _sure where he and Haytham stand with each other. But Haytham is standing in front of him actually crying, and this is all Connor can think of to do. "I'm sorry," he says.

"I don't know how much longer I can stay," Haytham says. "I swear, if this goes on much longer, I'm going to… I don't know what I'm going to do. But it's not going to go well for them _or _for us."

"It won't be long," Connor says, even though both of them know he can't possibly be sure. "It will get better."


	8. Chapter 8

**April**

**-/-**

"Haytham?"

He looks up from his computer screen to see one of the animus testers hovering around the far side of his desk. It's one of the new ones, some kid straight out of college that has no more idea than any of his coworkers what exactly they are being used for. Haytham is used to seeing new faces appear and disappear as employees are hired, worn out in the animus, and quietly removed before anyone realizes how badly they're being affected by the machines. He hasn't even learned this one's name yet. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"When I was hired…" the kid hesitates, shifting from one foot to the other. "I was told that the animus technology had been fully tested already, and that there would be no side effects."

Haytham makes a noncommittal noise- that particular lie is one he refuses to repeat, but he can't exactly go around telling all the testers what they've really signed up for, either. This is the best compromise he can come up with. "Are you experiencing side effects?" he asks.

"A few," the tester says. "Blurred vision, nightmares, and um…hallucinations."

"Do they last more than thirty seconds?" he asks.

The tester shakes his head. "No," he says. "I mean, not usually…"

Haytham considers this for a few minutes, while the tester waits nervously for some kind of response. Finally, Haytham gestures him closer and speaks in a low, hurried tone. "Listen," he says. "The hallucination are a known side effect, and one they- we- don't choose to share with testers."

"Why not?"

"That… is a very long story," Haytham says. "But the point is, if you want to stay sane, you should leave. Now. And if you want to stay free, you need to do a very good job of covering your tracks."

The kid nods, eyes wide, and almost trips over himself on his way out. Maybe he'll make it, maybe he won't, but at least he has a chance now. It's more than Haytham's been able to do for most of the idiots that stumble into Abstergo's path, and probably too much. He spends most of the morning worrying over what he'd said, and then does the only thing he can think of.

He goes for coffee.

After the weekend in March when they'd all met in the safehouse, Altair had announced- and most of them had agreed- that it wasn't a good idea to keep going with their current teams. At the very least, Ezio and Shaun needed to be separated before things between them went any farther. That was how Rebecca had come to be working with Haytham, also undercover at Abstergo (as a courier) but with much more frequent contact with the assassins. Ezio and Connor were continuing the research into various precursor sites around the world, while Altair and Shaun went looking for Juno herself.

Rebecca is waiting there for him, the same way she always is at half past one. They've carefully arranged it that way, synching their schedules so that they always _just happen _to be going for coffee at the same time. That way, it seems like mere random chance when they fall into conversation on the days they need to exchange information.

And today is definitely one of those days.

"You look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders," Rebecca says, as soon as he makes it downstairs.

"Tough morning," he says, and even through Rebecca can't ask questions in public, there's sympathy in her voice and on her face, and on days like this, that's something Haytham sorely needs. "One of my employees is having some trouble with work, and he came to me for advice." He closes his eyes, and focuses hard on keeping his voice level. "I… wasn't able to help as much as I wanted."

"Mmm," Rebecca says, and casually passes Haytham a piece of paper she's been scribbling on, apparently absentmindedly.

_We'll find him first._

Haytham lets out a shaky breath, feeling suddenly lightheaded. This- _this right here_- is why he's so grateful to have an assassin undercover with him. Sometimes, he gets so lost in the role of bad guy that he forgets he's not alone. The assassins can- will- help. They can save the kid Haytham wasn't able to help.

But now he looks over at Rebecca, and without his own worries he sees exhaustion and misery behind her cheerful façade. "How about you?" he asks. "You look like you're having a bad day yourself."

"An… old friend called last night," she says, and it could not be more obvious that she's talking about Shaun. They'd parted on bad terms, and Haytham hadn't worked up the nerve to ask for details yet. He knows they'd never been an official couple, exactly, but everyone that knew them had always sot of assumed they'd end up together. But Rebecca is pissed, and Haytham honestly isn't sure if it's because Shaun is linked to Ezio now, or because he sees to have adjusted so well.

"It didn't go well?"

"No," Rebecca says, and she laughs a little too loudly. Haytham frowns at the lack of control and glances around to see if anyone else has noticed. No one has. "He's still more concerned with… someone else than he is with me."

"Give it time," Haytham says. It's almost useless advice, but he can't think of anything better to say. "I'm sure it's as hard on you as it is on him."

"Maybe," Rebecca sighs. Then she checks her watch, grimaces, and tosses her almost full coffee cup into a bin nearby. "I'll see you later."

And Haytham is left to stare after her, sad and sorry, as she walks away.

-/-

"What's it like?" Rebecca asks one day. It's Sunday, a day off for both of them, and they've mutually decided it's probably safe enough to talk as long as they do it out of sight. So they're secreted in Haytham's tiny apartment, with its bare walls and plain furnishings, far from prying eyes that might wonder what they might have in common. It's probably not a safe move to make, but there's only so much secrecy either of them can take.

"What is… what like?" Haytham asks. His tone is light, almost lazy- this is his day off, after all, and for once he feels like everything is sort of going okay. It's nice to just be able to get out of bed in the morning and know that he won't have to spend the next eight hours watching people destroy themselves and their minds in the animus.

"Time travel," Rebecca says, waving a vague hand. "Wings. Your whole life, I guess."

He leans back, takes a second to consider his answer before saying so much as a single word. "Liberating," he finally answers. "Operating outside the normal rules of the universe makes you see everything in a different way."

"Nothing is true," Rebecca quotes, letting her gaze wander to the window. It's raining hard, and the glass is streaked with water trails. "Everything is permitted."

"Exactly," Haytham says. "I never used to understand the creed, but the more impossible things that happen to me, the more it starts to make sense."

"Sounds awesome," Rebecca says.

"It is. Except when it's the worst thing ever."

She gives him a look that tells him quite clearly that she thinks he's a moron, and for some reason that makes him laugh.

"What?" she snaps. "What you said doesn't make any sense!"

"Sorry. I just meant that it's not all good. Parts of it are… pretty terrible."

Her expression softens a little, apparently mollified. "Don't _laugh_…"

Afraid he might have offended her, Haytham quickly changes the subject. Unfortunately, the first topic he thinks of only serves to make things worse.

"Have you heard from any of the others lately?" he asks.

"No," Rebecca says, and her eyes visibly dim. "I've been sort of avoiding everyone since… you know. Everything that happened."

"But… you're not avoiding me," Haytham says.

"Well, I don't have much choice," Rebecca says. "We are working together, after all. And anyway, you're not that bad."

"Ringing endorsement, there," Haytham grumbles. He isn't exactly sure why it matters so much to him, what Rebecca thinks of him. But he spends every hour of every day lying to every other person he sees, and it's starting to drive him a little bit crazy. Rebecca is the only one that knows what he's really doing at Abstergo, and so right now she's the only one whose opinion technically counts for anything.

"Seriously though," Rebecca says, apparently unaware of Haytham's train of thought. "A few months ago you were just one of Desmond's ancestors on a computer screen. And not a very nice one. It's kind of an adjustment to get to know you like this."

"Sorry to be such a disappointment," Haytham says.

"I never said you were a disappointment," Rebecca says, and for the first time in the conversation she turns to look Haytham right in the face. "Just unexpected."

"Good," Haytham says, and he means it. But she still looks distant and sad, and Haytham realizes he's concerned. "Seriously, though," he says, drawing back to an earlier point in their conversation. "Are you okay with everything that happened?"

"Of course not," she says. "Shaun was always just kind of there, you know? But I was stupid, and waited, and never said anything because I thought he would still be there when I was ready. And now it's too late and I... missed my chance. And now I don't know what to do."

"Rebecca-"

He doesn't know exactly what he's going to say, but it doesn't matter because Rebecca doesn't give him the chance to say anything. As the silence and the tension between them starts to stretch to an uncomfortable length, she gets up and moves toward the door. "I should go."

So Haytham just stands there, wondering why he's always left behind, watching her walk away. And why he cares.

-/-

A week or so after that, Haytham is summoned to a meeting. It's a big deal, apparently- anyone that's anyone at Abstergo Entertainment Division is there, as are several people that (officially) have no business being present there at all. Some of Haytham's coworkers watch them carefully, wondering aloud, if quietly, who they are and what they're doing there. Haytham isn't among them, though, because he recognizes these men as higher ups in the templar order, people he's had the misfortune to work with a few times over the last few months. Their presence here makes him nervous.

The first hour or so of the meeting is dull, and concerned mostly with income reports and projections of how Abstergo Entertainment will be doing across the next few fiscal quarters. Haytham isn't the only one struggling to stay awake by the end. "So far," Olivier says as he wraps up his part of the presentation. "We have only released one title-_ Liberation_. Sales, as indicated, have been… underwhelming."

Haytham barely manages to repress a noise of disdain, not because of the economics of the situation, but because of the insult they've paid to Aveline's memory by releasing this product. He'd never met her himself, but he'd heard a lot about her and her work as an assassin. But what Abstergo's managed to do paints her as a traitor, someone that had gone from assassin to templar for hardly any reason at all. And they'd done it all through the use of clever editing, which somehow makes the whole thing seem worse.

Olivier goes on. "However, I fully expect our next project to be much more successful." He punches a button on his remote, and the presentation he's been going through for the last hour flips to a new slide, one that makes Haytham sit up and take notice for the first time all afternoon. In fact, he has to bite his tongue to keep from swearing aloud. He can taste something faint and coppery in his mouth from where he's bitten too hard and drawn blood, and his wings stir restlessly beneath the skin of his back, but Haytham hardly notices.

There's a photograph of Desmond's body on the screen, laid out in a morgue somewhere, eyes closed, pale in death, stripped of clothing and evidently post-autopsy, if the fresh stitches on his chest are anything to judge by. There's no sign of his wings- or very nearly no sign, at least. It's only because Haytham is specifically looking that he notices the nubs on his shoulder blades where his wings have been attached. He looks closer and sees the marks where they've been cut away, and suddenly it's a struggle to keep himself from throwing up. Bitterly, he wonders who cut the wings off, and why- to be studied, to make Desmond seem more normal in front of groups like this one? But he wonders only briefly, because in that moment all he can really concentrate on is the memory of another body- Edward's body- laid out on the street in front of him over two hundred years ago, torn and mutilated in almost exactly the same way.

"This is the source of the DNA we'll be going through for our next project," Olivier says. "The body was very generously donated to us after death, and we intend to take full advantage of that."

Donated, Haytham scoffs in the privacy of his own head. Bull.

"We'll be exploring his ancestry through the Sample 17 Project."

Sample 17- was that better or worse than being Subject 17?

"And our first target will be the eighteenth century pirate, Edward Kenway."

_Fuck_.

"Excuse me," Haytham says, standing so quickly his chair almost falls over. "I need to take a call."

No one stops him as he pushes his way out of the room, as he takes the elevator to the lobby, as he makes a quick escape into the fresh air outside.

He stands- or leans, really- against the side of the building for he doesn't know how long, trying to stop the horror in his mind. But no amount of rationalization or reassurances will serve to calm him down, and Haytham can feel the panic rising. It's bad enough that they're using Desmond to get what they want, _again_, that they can't even let him rest in peace after the sacrifice he's made to save the world (including them). They're using him to see his _father's _memories, and there is no way that's okay.

It's not until he looks up and sees Rebecca on the sidewalk in front of him that Haytham realizes it must be past 1:30. "Rebecca," he says, not even bothering to hide the desperation in his voice. He's still working on keeping himself from _crying_, that's how upset he is.

"Haytham-" she moves forward, takes his hand in a motion that feels like she's expecting him to run, and wants to stop him. "You look awful."

"I feel worse," he manages, after a too-long struggle to get his voice under control.

"What happened?"

"They have Desmond's body," Haytham says, hardly caring that they're on an open street where anyone could hear them. "They cut off his _wings-_" He struggles for a second before going on. "And they're going to use his DNA to go through my father's memories."

"God, Haytham…" Rebecca bites her lip, then goes on. "I'm so sorry."

"Every day, I wake up-" Haytham takes a shuddering breath. "And I wonder what the point is. My family's scattered or dead. I'm trapped in enemy territory, and since coming here I've had to cross lines I swore to myself I never would." Those are the days he's never talked about, the things he had to do to convince the templars he's worth trusting, and the nightmares that still keep him up some nights. "What am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know,' Rebecca says. "But trust me, I know what it feels like to wonder why I have to keep going…" And there's so much sadness on her face that Haytham knows she _does _understand.

He interrupts her, not with words, but by leaning down and kissing her. There's a moment when she does nothing, overwhelmed by surprise, but then she pushes back, as desperate as he is for something _human_, some contact to remind herself that she is still alive.

In the back of his mind, Haytham lists every reason that this is wrong- he's taking advantage of Rebecca after what happened to Shaun, he's a solid ten years (two and a half centuries) older than she is, they're standing in a busy street in the middle of Montreal, and they're drawing far too much attention to themselves. He even pauses to consider that somehow this is a betrayal to Connor's mother, even though he's never met the woman, and she's been dead now for hundreds of years. But, in the end, none of that matters. Because they are both still human, and they are both still alive.

And at least this time, he doesn't have to watch her walk away.

**-/-**

**I am so sorry. I don't even ship this pairing, like it's ridiculous and awful and I'm so sorry it happened. It wouldn't have, if I hadn't been really sick while writing this chapter.**

**Although looking on the bright side, a pairing this bad is pretty much doomed to fail and /that/ is going to be fun to write about.**


	9. Chapter 9

Haytham is fully aware that he's not supposed to be in contact with any of the assassins besides Rebecca. The whole point of having her around is to keep him as unconnected to the rest of the order as possible while he's infiltrating the templars- but that just means he has no one else to talk to when she's the one he's having a problem with.

So he calls Connor. It's not the perfect solution. As far as he knows, Connor has never slept with a woman, or even thought about doing so. He's not the best person to go to for relationship advice, but there are only so many people that understand the background of what happened here. Ezio and Shaun are both far too involved, and bringing this particular problem to Altair would be… embarrassing. Too much judgment there.

It's maybe 7:30 when Haytham dials, but when Connor answers he sounds fuzzy and tired. For a second, Haytham is distracted from his own problems. "Were you asleep?" he asks.

"Yes," Connor answers, almost in a growl.

"It's not even 8:00."

"It's past midnight in London," Connor says. "What do you want?"

"What are you doing in London?"

"There's rumors of a first civ artifact somewhere in White Chapel. Tied to Jack the Ripper or something. We're going out first thing in the morning."

"Sounds exciting."

"Why did you call, Haytham?" Connor asks, and he's obviously too tired to bother trying to hide his annoyance.

Haytham opens his mouth- closes it again. "Never mind," he says. "I'll call back in the morning."

"Absolutely not," Connor says. "You called and woke me up, so tell me what the problem is."

"Um…" Where to start? "A lot happened today. Abstergo has Desmond's body, and they're going to use his DNA to research Edward's life."

"They have Desmond's-" And Connor sounds completely awake now. "Shit. They know about his wings?"

"I assume so," Haytham says. "They were… already cut off in the photo I saw, but I don't know who else would have cut them before they got to his body. They didn't say anything, but not everyone in the room was a templar. They have to keep some things secret."

"That's- okay, so that's bad news." Connor sounds like he's dealing with this new information about as well as Haytham had when he first found out. "So that's why you called?"

"No," Haytham says. "I couldn't handle seeing that. I panicked. Ran outside. And then Rebecca found me and we…"

"You what?"

"Come on, Connor," Haytham says, fully aware that there's a hot red flush rising up his neck. "Don't make me spell it out."

"No seriously," Connor says. "I don't get it. What did you do, get in a fight with some templars or something? Blow you cover?"

"No!" Haytham says. "I'm not that stupid."

"Then what's the big problem?" Connor demands.

"I kissed her!"

There's a very long silence, and then Connor says, "Oh."

"So you understand my problem," Haytham says.

"Yea… wow," Connor says. "I just can't believe- what did she do?"

"She kissed me back."

"That's good, isn't it?" Connor asks, in a vague, clueless sort of way that makes Haytham smile, even with his current worries. "I mean that's how… relationships work, right?"

"One of these days, I am going to be very interested to find out how you managed to become Desmond's ancestor," Haytham says. "In any version of the timeline. I've never met anyone that understands relationships less than you do."

"Which is why you called me for advice," Connor says, with more sarcasm than Haytham is used to hearing from him.

"Fine, yes," Haytham says. "I don't know what to do and I don't have anyone else to talk to."

"Well-" Connor makes a noise that might be frustration or exhaustion or both. "Seriously, how do you feel about her?"

"No idea," Haytham says. "I don't know how much of it's real and how much it's just panic and the two of us being pretty much cut off from everyone else."

"So give it some time," Connor says. "See what she does, maybe?"

"That would be great advice," Haytham says. "Except she came over to my apartment to talk about what happened, and now I'm hiding in the bathroom."

Connor actually laughs. "Well then I'm all out of ideas," he says. "Have fun."

"Wait, Connor!"

But suddenly there's a dial tone in his ear and Haytham is left cursing at himself in the privacy of his own toilet. Then he takes a deep breath, and goes out to face the music.

She's in the bedroom- it's a studio apartment, so technically the whole place is the bedroom- waiting for Haytham when he comes back in. "Hey," he says.

"Hey."

"Listen, I-"

"I should have said-"

They both stop, mumbling apologies and backing up. In the end, Rebecca speaks first. "I know we didn't plan this, and honestly I would never have expected this to happen in a million years."

"But?"

"But… would it really be so bad if we found out where this is going to go?" she asks. "It's not like there's anyone else around, right? It's just us. We're on our own. Unless we're… you know. Together."

"What about Shaun?" Haytham asks.

"I have no idea how I feel about him these days," Rebecca says bluntly. "I know he can't help what happened to him, but he still kept it a secret, and lied, and refuses to even try to get over it. Maybe I'm taking it too personally, but it feels an awful lot like a betrayal."

"I'm sorry," Haytham says. "And I… if you want to see where this goes-" something flips in his stomach, a weightless, dizzy feeling, like flight. "I'd like to know, too. But not if I'm just a replacement for someone you can't have."

"No one could ever say you're a replacement for Shaun," Rebecca laughs. "Unless you want to say I have a thing for British guys, there's not much you two have in common." Her expression darkens for a second. "But the same goes for you. If I'm just a way for you to run away from your problems, I don't want any part of this."

"You're not," Haytham says. "I swear."

"Good," Rebecca says. "Then I think maybe this can work."

-/-

It takes several days, almost a week, for Desmond's DNA to get transferred into the appropriate systems, but it's not long before the first footage of Edward Kenway shows up on Haytham's desk. It comes in an e-mail, and Haytham spends all morning avoiding it. Finally, just after 1:00, when he can't avoid it anymore, Haytham leans as far away from his computer as possible, and clicks the e-mail open.

The extra foot or so of distance doesn't make any difference, of course. The footage inside is as painful (more painful) than he'd expected. It's nothing special, of course. After only a couple days of work, there's not much footage to show yet. Over time, as the testers' synch rates get higher and Abstergo gets a clearer picture of what they want, there will be floods of information to wade through and analyze.

But now… now, there are only a few scenes, the ones that the testers were best able to synch with. Haytham watches them play out on his computer screen in silence (he can't bring himself to turn the sound on quite yet, because he's half afraid he won't be able to keep his composure). There are naval battles aboard the Jackdaw, childhood days full of sheep in his parents' farm in Swansea, nothing particularly important or surprising. Haytham is just starting to calm down, to think that maybe he'll be able to deal with this after all, when he gets to the last attached video in the file.

This one, unlike the others, is headed by a brief note from the tester that recorded it- _This isn't directly related to the Edward Kenway project, but when I went into the animus I started looking around and realized that the rest of the family is absolutely fascinating, too- this is some footage from his son. Might be worth looking into farther down the line?_

And suddenly, Haytham is looking at a video of (not quite) himself, of the man he could have been. "Shit," he mumbles, suddenly pushing his chair as close to his computer as he can get, studying every detail of the footage in front of him. For a second, he's terrified that a stupid screwup like this is going to be what outs him as a spy. Then he rolls his eyes and shakes his head because technically it would only prove he's a time traveler- the Haytham in this footage actually _had _been a templar. They'd probably trust him more.

But as the footage rolls, Haytham breathes a sigh of relief and sags a little in his chair. Then, he starts looking at the feed with more interest. This video shows the other version of him at maybe ten years younger than he is now, but there are little to no similarities to show that they're actually the same person. The Haytham on the screen _looks_ older, even though he's not. His face is more lined, more marred by tension and responsibility, but it's missing the scar Haytham's had since he was eighteen (a long scratch across one eyebrow from a fight with a bear). And he's stockier, more muscled and heavier. It makes sense, in a way- in this timeline, Haytham's bones are hollow to keep him light enough to fly, but it's also made him lithe and thin. And, most importantly, different enough from the Haytham in the animus to avoid being recognized.

It's because he's so busy analyzing the differences between himself and the man on the screen that Haytham doesn't actually take in the content of the video for several seconds. Then he says "oh" very quietly and feels his face go through several shades of red. Because he doesn't recognize the woman on the screen with (other) him, but he can see traces of Connor in her face that tell him very clearly who she must be. So he sits there, feeling oddly stalkerish, as he watches the whole awkward courtship between himself and a woman he's never met, right up until the moment of Connor's conception.

And the strange thing is that he can't stop seeing similarities between this woman (Ziio) and Rebecca. They're both fighters, both more stubborn than they should be, both relatively straightforward in what they say and how they say it.

Long after the footage cuts out and he's left staring at a black screen, Haytham just sits there, in silence, thinking.

-/-

"I have a type," he tells Rebecca that night.

"What do you mean?"

"I met Connor's mother today," he says. "I mean… 'met'. Animus footage. But there's parts of her that remind me of you."

"I guess that's a compliment," Rebecca says, after considering that. "I mean you- other you- had a son with her, right?" She turns red, and backs up quickly. "Not that I'm looking for anything like that. Obviously not, I mean- I'm still sort of waiting for one of us to realize how ridiculous this whole thing is and just break it off."

"So am I," Haytham admits. "And trust me, Connor's told me all about his parents. They split up before he was born so saying you remind me of her probably isn't the greatest compliment."

"Well-" Rebecca stands, moves closer to him. They're in her apartment rather than his today, so she has to move around half built electronics and piles of equipment to get to him. "Maybe I remind you of her, but you don't remind me of him. You're a different man."

"Is different… better?" Haytham asked.

"I think so."

As usual, when they come together its fast and unplanned and beautiful. For a minute (or more, or less- Haytham isn't exactly keeping track of time), everything is okay. Then her hands reach farther around him, and Haytham almost moans aloud as she hits exactly the right place on his back, the one that makes it feel like she's touching his wings through his skin. She stops, pulling back a little. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No," Haytham says. "It's fine." Understandment.

"Can I…" she bites her lip. "Can I feel them?"

This time, the normal pain of bringing out his wings (although very present and very real) is a little easier than normal to ignore. Rebecca's eyes are wide and interested, and she lets her hands run slowly across the entire breadth of one wing before speaking again. He doesn't stop her, partly because her fingers against his feathers feels like nothing else he's ever felt before, and mostly because the wonder on her face is beautiful to watch. "How can you stand to keep them hidden?" she asks at last. "You look like part of you is missing without them."

"No," Haytham says, all in a rush because he knows that as soon as he says the words he'll realize how stupid and corny they sound. "Part of me is missing without you."

She snorts. "I never in a million years would have pegged you for a romantic." But she doesn't look unhappy.

"And trust me, I am disgusted with what I just heard come out of my mouth," Haytham says. "I'll try to avoid it in the future."

"Don't," she says, very quietly. "Don't change for me. Don't even change the stupid things."

"So you think it's stupid?"

She smiles.

And as they move together, more slowly this time, Haytham is also wondering when he became such a hopeless, helpless romantic. Because he never used to be, he's never had the time or patience or energy for even a short term relationship. He's always tried to be strong, because it makes way more sense to avoid relationships like this. Whatever Rebecca says, about not wanting him to change for her, that ship has clearly already sailed.

He pulls back before she does. "We can't do this now," he says. "We spend most of our time pretending we don't even know each other, because it might draw attention to what we're really doing at Abstergo. And then, when we're together it's like we're trying to cram an entire relationship until a couple hours a night. It's too hard."

She sighs and steps away, laughing bitterly. "Abstergo," she says, and it sounds like a curse. "Templars! Ruining everything, as usual. We can't talk to anyone else, we can't go anywhere, we can't do anything that might make us seem at all abnormal. Please don't let them take away the one good thing that's happened since Desmond died."

And he can't argue, not when she's claiming he's the only good thing in her life for the last four months. "Alright," he says, and while part of him feels incredibly grateful that she's shot him down, the rest of him is more concerned with the vast number of ways this could go wrong.

-/-

**Next chapter- switching to Connor and Ezio, because that's quite enough about relationships for now. And speaking of relationships- thanks for sticking with this bit of weirdness.**

**Also, I'm just going to say that Haytham calling Connor for relationship advice is possibly the most fun thing I've written in months.**

**A last note on timing: I just finished AC:U and there's a time anomaly related oneshot that's just _begging _to be written. So expect a brief delay in chapter ten while I work on that for a while.**


	10. Chapter 10

**May**

**-/-**

Connor stands very still as the museum guard passes him. He's pissed off, and that makes it harder to keep from moving. When Ezio had first suggested this… _heist_, for lack of a better word, Connor had been against it. There are plenty of first civilization artifacts in the world, and they don't need to rob museums to get them.

But Ezio had won that argument- he wins most of them- and so Connor had insisted on at least doing it quietly. Better they get in and out without anyone ever knowing they'd been there. They'd spent days planning, scouting, preparing for every possibility.

Except, it turns out, for the possibility that the unfortunate guards to pull the graveyard shift might be bored and disinclined to actually follow their usual patrol routes. There should have been another fifteen minutes before a guard passed through this way. Instead, Connor just barely managed to duck into an alcove as a stray guard comes rambling through, looking for anything to distract him.

He actually passes within three feet of where Connor stands, but by some lucky chance he happens to be looking the other way at the time. When he's finally alone again, Connor breathes a sigh of relief and hurries into the next room, where his target is.

And then he stops dead in his tracks. "Ezio," he whispers into his earpiece.

"What?" Ezio says at once. "Are you almost done in there?"

Connor rolls his eyes and bites back the first response that comes to mind. "No," he says. "I'm not, because this artifact you sent me to steal is a slab of stone as big as my chest."

"It is?" Ezio swears, and Connor catches himself nodding in agreement at the sentiment.

"I can carry it myself, but not without the guards seeing."

Ezio sighs, and it comes through Connor's earpiece as a burst of static. After a moment of silence, he says- "There's no guards out here."

"That doesn't help me any," Connor snaps. "Not when I'm in here."

"And there's a giant glass window right over the room you're standing in."

Connor connects the dots in an instant and scowls, even though he knows Ezio can't see it from outside.

"Don't make that face," Ezio says, which only makes Connor scowl harder. Sometimes he forgets that they've known each other long enough that he doesn't _have _to see. "You know it's the only way you're taking the artifact out with you."

There are footsteps behind him, and Connor glances over his shoulder to see the shadow of one of the guards coming toward the door. "Fine," he snaps. "But next time, you can come in here and steal it yourself, and I can sit outside and play lookout."

"Deal," Ezio says, and Connor gets to work. By the time the guard has turned the corner into the room, Connor's got his arms wrapped around the stone and has launched himself into the air. It's more of a struggle than usual to get off the ground, but even the weight of the stone in his arms isn't enough to keep him on the ground. The window, despite being on a high ceiling and out of reach, has a latch. Connor twists it open and shoulders his way through the window.

Outside, Ezio's idling in a stolen car next to a burned out streetlight. It's dark enough for Connor to land right next to the vehicle, only pulling his wings in when he ducks into the passenger seat. The sharp stab of pain in his back where the wings have pushed through the skin (still as bad as the first time, always as bad as the first time) puts him in an even worse mood than before, and he can't quite keep himself from snapping.

"What's so important about this thing anyway?"

"Nothing," Ezio mumbles, but he's suddenly very interested in checking his side mirror as he backs out of his parking space. Since he's never been the safest driver (he'd run over seven mailboxes before Connor stopped keeping track), this immediately catches Connor's attention.

"Seriously though," he says. "There must have been something specific about this that you wanted. That's why you insisted so much that we go after this… thing in particular."

Ezio waits until they're safely away and roaring down the highway before he says, "It's for Shaun."

Connor huffs and glares at the other man. If they'd been going less than sixty miles an hour he would have whacked him. "Seriously?"

"It's not-" Ezio grumbles in Italian, and Connor picks up only enough to gather that he's upset and exasperated. "Listen, none of us know what happened in Egypt, but it needs to stop."

"I thought you were enjoying the whole thing," Connor says, and then promptly shouts a warning as Ezio turns to look at him, almost sending them into oncoming traffic. "And I swear, you're never driving again."

"It wasn't so bad when we were in the same place," Ezio says. "But he's in Barcelona with Altair now-"

"How do you know that?" Connor interrupts.

"Because I can feel him," Ezio says. "All the time, in my head. I know exactly where he is, and how far away, and that it's- it's _too damn far. _And that's just one of the reasons I want him out as badly as he wants to get rid of me."

"Sorry," Connor mutters, when he judges Ezio has had a chance to settle down a little. Ezio has always been the most prone to emotional outbursts out of all of them, but this is more raw, with all his defenses stripped away. Connor wonders how long he's been holding this in. "I didn't know. I mean, from here it looks like…"

"I know what it looks like," Ezio mumbles. "But it's not easy to talk about."

"Fine," Connor says, nudging the stone with his foot. It makes a solid thump. "How does this help?"

"There was precursor writing on the walls of that place," Ezio says. "Shaun couldn't figure out what most of them meant, but this thing… it's supposed to be like the Rosetta Stone of precursor language."

"So you think it'll help you figure out how to stop it?"

"That's the plan," Ezio says, and Connor notices the way he's gripping the steering wheel just a little too tightly. "That's the plan."

-/-

They spend nearly six solid hours with the stone that night, taking photographs and documenting every inch of text from every angle. "None of this looks legible," Connor says doubtfully, when they finally stop. It's very nearly sunrise by now, and he's rubbing tiredness from his eyes. "Are you sure it's going to help?"

"Half of it's precursor," Ezio says. "Don't ask me what half, I have no idea. The other is… cuneiform, I think it's called?" he shrugs. "I'm not an expert. I mean… I spent half my life hunting these artifacts down, but I never thought to try and understand them." He shakes his head, frowns, corrects himself. "Or I mean- I never thought it would actually be possible."

"Is it, though?" Connor asks doubtfully. "Possible, I mean. It's not like cuneiform is still used today."

"But it's been studied more than precursor writings," Ezio says. "It can't possibly _hurt_." Perfectly on cue, he stubs his toe on the stone and swears, loudly.

"You were saying?"

"Don't start getting sarcastic with me now," Ezio says. "You've been spending too much time with Haytham."

The smile that's started to form on Connor's face slides right off again. He hopes Ezio won't notice, but even preoccupied with his injured toe, Ezio is unexpectedly perceptive. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing," Connor says, too quickly. The truth is, Ezio's casual mention of Haytham has reminded Connor that he's keeping the man's new relationship with Rebecca a secret. He doesn't like hiding things from people, especially family.

"Not nothing," Ezio says. "You're a terrible liar."

Connor crosses his arms, affronted and momentarily distracted. "I'm a fine liar," he says. "How could I not be? We're all lying about who we are and where we're from and what we can do." He half furls his wings in a pointed reminder.

"Yea," Ezio says. "But I've known you since you were eighteen. I know when you're lying. So seriously, what's wrong?"

"It's not me," Connor says. "Haytham's dating Rebecca."

Ezio snorts. "Yea, sure," he says. "The only one worse with women than Haytham is- well, you."

This is absolutely true, so Connor doesn't argue. "I'm serious," he says instead. "I didn't want to tell you, because… well, you know. Rebecca and Shaun always seemed like they were right on the verge of getting together. And since you and Shaun are… whatever you are, I thought it would be better not to tell you. It seems like something Rebecca should tell Shaun herself, and if I tell you, he'll know."

"You shouldn't feel like you have to lie to me."

"Then you shouldn't get _married _to everyone you happen to spend a couple weeks alone with," Connor snaps, and he notices that Ezio doesn't actually argue that Shaun won't know now he does.

"Alright," Ezio laughs. "I'll try not to make a habit of it."

"Not funny," Connor says. "It's really not."

Ezio gives him a look that is (again) far too perceptive for Connor's taste. "I think you're more upset about all this than Shaun and I are," he says.

"I'm not-"

"_Connor._"

"Fine," Connor says. "Desmond's dead, you're practically glued to Shaun at the hip, Haytham's got a _girlfriend_, and Altair's being reckless and doing stupid things that get him hurt and I'm just… exactly the same."

"Geeze, Connor," Ezio shakes his head. "Weird just flows off you like water off a duck's back."

"…is that good?"

"It's just you," Ezio says. "I mean, the whole world could end and you'd still be there, just the same and as stubborn as ever."

Connor sighs, and Ezio nudges him with his shoulder. "Stop it," Connor grumbles, but Ezio's earlier answer has mollified him a little, and he doesn't argue when the other man changes the subject.

"So tell me about Haytham and Rebecca," Ezio says, tone suddenly light. "I'm sure it's been a complete disaster so far."

Connor makes a confused noise. "I guess?" he says. "I don't know how these things are supposed to work, but Haytham calls a lot."

"What? No. Next time, give me the phone and I'll let him have some advice worth listening to."

"I think he'd have come and talked to you himself if he wanted your help," Connor says, doubtfully.

"Pssh." Ezio dismisses this offhandedly. "I've been with more women than either you or Haytham has ever even _seen_."

"Maybe if he gets desperate enough," Connor says, and makes a mental note to never let Ezio give Haytham advice. Ever. He gets up and nudges the stone with his foot. Carefully, because he doesn't want to injure himself the same way Ezio had. "So what do we do with this thing?"

"Leave it here, I guess," Ezio says. "It's not like we can move quickly while we're carrying it, and we got all the pictures we can use."

"This is really going to confuse someone, somewhere," Connor says.

"Imagine it getting written up in the papers," Ezio adds. "World's worst thieves steal giant hunk of rock from museum, abandon it in motel room."

"Who cares what people think?" Connor says. He glances around the room one more time, just to make sure they haven't forgotten anything. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

**-/-**

**Side note about canon in this fic- because it's a continuation from Learning to Soar, which I wrote before Unity and Rogue came out, I'm going to continue to pretend that they just don't exist. So if I contradict something from one of those games, that's why. Just mentioning it now because someone asked after the last chapter.**


	11. Chapter 11

**June**

**-/-**

"Oh thank God," Shaun says. "It's not fertility."

It's half past midnight and Altair is half asleep at the table next to him, so at first the words don't quite penetrate his conscious mind. Then he groans and sits up, because that comment really deserves an explanation. "What's not fertility?" he asks.

"The glyphs at the place where Ezio and I… you know." Shaun waves a vague hand in what looks like a random direction, but Altair is absolutely certain he's gesturing at Ezio. "There were only two or three I could figure out for sure, but there was one that I thought meant 'fertility'." He turns his laptop so Altair can see the pictures on the screen, although they look absolutely meaningless to him. This research is entirely Shaun's domain.

"So what does it mean?" he asks.

"Reincarnation," Shaun says.

"What?"

"Like- you know, rebirth-"

"I know what the word means," Altair says. "I meant what are you talking about?"

"It's a little complicated," Shaun admits. "And I couldn't translate everything. But you know how the precursors were trying basically everything to survive by the end?"

"They figured out a way to reincarnate themselves?" Altair asks, because he can put two and two together.

"That's what it looks like," Shaun says, nodding. "But they need what they call 'Bonded DNA' to complete the process. That's what the place in the desert was. A way to bond DNA." He laughs in obvious delight. "It's such a relief. I thought one of us was going to get pregnant or something…"

"You're both men," Altair points out.

"I'm not exactly counting on the laws of biology to save us," Shaun mutters. "There's too much weird going on already."

Altair nods absentmindedly. "Are you going to do it?" he asks.

"Do what?"

"The reincarnation," Altair says. "Bringing back a precursor."

"Why would we want to?" Shaun asks. "We already have enough of a problem with Juno on the loose, why on Earth would we want to bring a second one back?"

"Because this one might not be the same," Altair says. "Juno's a monster and a murderer and she's done terrible things. But there's nothing to show that she was typical of her kind- a society full of people like Juno would collapse on itself in no time at all. And if this one's better, they could be exactly what we need to get a leg up on her."

"No!" Shaun says. "Absolutely not."

"Why?"

"What do you mean, _why_?" Shaun slams the laptop closed and moves around the tiny motel room, anger in every step and every word. "Would you do it?"

"I don't know," Altair says. "But I know I can't. That's up to you and Ezio."

Shaun continues to grumble under his breath for a while, and finally Altair stands and announces he's going out for a while. Shaun's not a bad guy, really he's not, but there are definitely times Altair wants to pull his hair out with frustration. Some days, when Altair is feeling particularly petty, he's grateful that Ezio's the one bonded with Shaun. He would have gone crazy, had it been him instead.

Although… now Altair actually stops and thinks it over, he has to admit there might be something really wrong. Lately, Shaun has been more bad tempered than usual. It's just that Altair hasn't seen any sign of what could have caused the sudden mood swing. After mulling this over for a while, Altair goes back inside. "So where is this precursor you're supposed to bring back?" he asks.

Shaun looks up, startled. "I thought you'd be gone longer," he says.

"Just answer the question."

"Somewhere in Canada, I think," Shaun says. "I have to double check the coordinates. Why do you want to know?"

"Because we're going to see it for ourselves."

"No," Shaun says. "Absolutely not! I told you, I have absolutely no interest in bringing this asshole back to life."

But Altair is well used to corralling stubborn assassins into doing what they don't want to do, and Altair feels instinctively that this is important. He only glares at Shaun in response, and maybe it's the pieces of Ezio in Shaun that make him back down right away, even though he's never seen The Look before. Ezio, on the other hand, has seen The Look plenty of times- he has a habit of getting himself into trouble.

"Fine," Shaun says, and he turns his back on Altair, shuffling papers and packing things into his bag. "I don't see why you're so insistent on going, though. We don't need to."

"We do," Altair says. "And I want to know why you're so against it."

He sees Shaun's shoulders go stiff, but for once the man doesn't bother arguing that nothing is wrong. "Because," he says quietly. "Rebecca's dating Haytham now."

Altair raises an eyebrow at Shaun's back. He's never been remarkably perceptive when it comes to relationships, but he's had the foggy idea for a while now that Rebecca and _Shaun _were the couple. Although it would explain Shaun's bad temper lately. "Where did you hear that?" he asks.

"Haytham told Connor," Shaun mutters. "Connor told Ezio, and now that Ezio knows, I know. But the point is… I can't have a baby, or- or a reincarnated precursor or whatever- with Ezio. Not when she's…"'

And Altair doesn't know much about men and women, but he recognizes the misery in Shaun's face as he hurries past, so fast he hits Altair's shoulder on the way out. For the first time, he realizes exactly how much this bond is costing Shaun, and he feels a sudden wave of pity go coursing through him.

-/-

They travel up to Canada, because that's where Shaun's coordinates take them, but it takes a while to find the entrance. "I don't get it," Altair complains. "There's nothing here. Just a lake."

"So maybe it hasn't always been a lake," Shaun says. He somehow looks even less happy than he had on the (long) drive out here. His face is pale and he slumps against the low wooden railing of the dock like it's all that's holding him upright. Altair spares a moment to be annoyed at the man's continuing insistence that he doesn't want to be here. "It's called _first _civilization for a reason. They were around a bloody long time ago. Whatever we're looking for is probably underwater and unreachable by now."

"It might not be," Altair says. "The things they built were made to last." There's no one else around, so Altair pulls off his jacket and kicks off his shoes.

"You're going to jump in and look," Shaun says flatly. Then he snorts. "Figures."

Altair ignores him and dives. It's been a long time since he's done any serious swimming, but this is the perfect day for it and the lake is clear and easy to see through. It's large, but Altair finds what he's looking for right away by switching into eagle vision- the entrance glows with a golden glow no less bright for being underwater. He kicks his way over to it, and finds a natural air pocket with enough solid ground to stand on. It smells and looks like a cave, and Altair can feel the roots of grass and trees knocking against his head from the solid ground above him.

He walks a little farther, and finds the ruins of a stone door knocked over by some long forgotten disaster. Altair considers going back up to find Shaun and drag him down here, but reconsiders. It's hard to imagine Shaun swimming any serious distance, and honestly he does look a little ill. This probably isn't the best time for him to be underwater.

So Altair goes in alone, footsteps ringing against stone stairs that look like they haven't been used in centuries. They probably haven't been, and there's something oddly cheering about seeing something older than he is. The stairs go down for a long way before finally leveling out into a room that looks disappointingly empty.

"Well," a voice says from behind him (even though Altair is positive there had been no one there a moment ago). It sounds distant and ever so slightly teasing, and more than that familiar. "You're a surprise."

"Minerva," Altair says, turning around and crossing his arms. "What are you doing here?"

She's there, sort of, the same sort of hologram Altair had seen in the temple before Desmond died, looking tired and sad. "You were clever enough to find this place. You must know what its purpose is."

"You're-" and really, Altair doesn't know why he's surprised. It's easy to figure out why he's angry, though. "You argued against bringing Juno back to life, and here you are, wanting the same exact thing!"

Minerva crosses the distance between them, and Altair hates the way he has to look up to meet her gaze. The woman must be at least seven feet tall. "I haven't been completely idle over the millennia," she says, and for a disorienting moment Altair feels like they're having two different conversations. "I have some small influence over the world around me," she says. "I won't explain how it works, because it's centuries ahead of what humans have developed."

"What did you do?" Altair asks.

"Before I was… interred here, I studied the timeline. Its branching paths, its possibilities, its good and bad outcomes."

"You can do that?"

"Of course." Minerva reaches out a hand, and even under its insubstantial weight, Altair can feel his wings stir beneath his back. "I saw what would happen between Desmond and Juno. I saw that her manipulations would see him killed and her freed- I wanted to help, and I thought changing his genetics would make him useless to Juno. I thought I could save him. So I gave you wings."

"_You_ did?"

"I thought that over the centuries, they would be passed down to him. But Juno saw what I did, and shunted you into another timeline. So I tried again, with Ezio. And she stopped me. Again. And then all three Kenways. She stopped me every time, and eventually I gave Desmond himself wings- and it turns out Juno could use him anyway." Her mouth twists into a bitter frown. "That was a terrible mistake. Last time I try something like that."

"But you… you _did _try," Altair says. "You helped more than you know."

"But I failed," Minerva says.

"So did I," Altair says. "So did we all."

They stand in silence for a little while longer, and when Minerva finally speaks again it's in a quiet, broken voice that surprises Altair. He's never thought of the precursors as people that could be hurt. They've always seemed powerful, angry, vengeful. But here is compassion, a desire to do good, even remorse. Suddenly Minerva looks a little more alive.

"I just want a second chance," she says. "I don't want the same thing Juno does. I don't want power or revenge. I want to fix my mistakes, and…" she laughs, without a trace of humor. "And I want to make new ones. I want to love, to hate, to do stupid things, and great ones. I want to be human."

"It's not up to me," Altair says, when he can force his shocked tongue to form words again.

"I know," Minerva says. "But you wouldn't be here if you didn't know someone that can help."

Altair nods. "I'll talk to them," he says. "I promise."

The whole way back up to land, Altair rehearses what he's going to say to Shaun. Without having seen what happened in the lake, there's no way he'll believe it without proof. Altair has no proof to offer, but he's determined to convince him anyway. He reaches land and shakes himself off as best he can, running a hand through hair that has far more gray than it had six months ago. Since Desmond died he's felt aged, and he knows he's starting to look it too. He'd turned fifty in January, and with the stress and the grief of the last few months…

And really, that's why he wants to help Minerva so badly. It's not like she knows Desmond, not the way the rest of them do. But she'd tried to help anyway, and really it's thanks to her that Altair had the chance to know Desmond at all. And the rest of his family, for that matter. He feels that he owes her… something.

It's while he's still lost in thoughts like these that Altair reaches the place where he'd left Shaun, and stops abruptly in his tracks. "She said she wasn't going to do this again," he says, mostly to himself. Shaun's certainly not in any position to listen, passed out in a cold sweat and shaking from fever.

Even before Altair turns the man onto his stomach and presses a hand to the writhing muscles on his back, he knows what he'll find. And he knows, more by instinct than anything else, that this isn't Minerva's doing. This is more of the strangeness that's come out of his bond with Ezio. Shaun groans, a pained and pitiful noise, and his whole body arcs against a pain that Altair can remember only too well. He grabs the man and lifts him, dragging until they reach the car. Halfway there Shaun opens his eyes, but they're glassy and stare at nothing.

"…don't feel good," he mumbles, barely audible.

"I know," Altair says. "It's okay. You're growing wings."

This day is shaping up to be one of the strangest he's ever had.


	12. Chapter 12

**July**

**-/-**

Shaun doesn't know how long the fever lasts. Sometimes time passes so slowly he feels like it must have stopped completely, and sometimes it rushes past and Shaun can't even catch his breath. Something bad is happening, and Shaun's mind rebels against it, fighting the change he can feel in every inch of his body. The fever doesn't go away, and Shaun's mind is sluggish, too slow to put the pieces together and figure out what's happening. All he knows is that it hurts and _God _he wants it to stop.

Sometimes he hears voices, but doesn't listen, or feels hands on his flaming skin, but shies away. And then, after a period of time that could have been hours or days, he feels a new touch on his back, on his forehead. Cool hands on his fevered body, and the gentle brush of wings against his arms. He knows without opening his eyes that the hands and the wings are Ezio's. It's the only touch he can stand right now, and he falls into it with a desperation he has never allowed himself before.

Right now, Shaun needs... something. Comfort, safety, something. And if his mind and body have decided Ezio can be those things for him, Shaun is in absolutely no position to care. He's barely in a position to know what he's doing, only that the burning need to be close to Ezio is back, and he's tired of fighting the feeling.

"It's okay," Ezio says quietly, and Shaun almost manages to believe him. Then his fragile grasp on consciousness shatters completely, and he falls back into an unhappy sleep.

Some unknown amount of time later (and Shaun cannot for the life of him say how long), the world comes back. Shaun feels… better? Better with a question mark, because something is still not quite right. He cracks one eye open, and immediately regrets it as a poor life choice. There's sunlight streaming in through an open window next to his bed, and the light makes his head throb and his stomach churn. He opens the other eye and glances around, at the unfamiliar hotel room he's lying in. It's not overwhelmingly interesting, not after months and months of similar rooms.

With some effort, Shaun manages to lift his head far enough over the edge of the bed to vomit onto the floor.

"Ugh," Ezio says from somewhere near the foot of the bed. Shaun can't see him, but he doesn't need to. The other man's presence is something he can feel in his mind. "That's gross."

"Shut up," Shaun mumbles, burying his head in his pillow. "What are you doing here?" Not that he minds- if he hadn't been so exhausted from his sickness, Shaun knows his entire body would have been shaking with the need to _touch_-

"Altair called me," Ezio explains. "He said you were… sick. And it might help for me to be here because of our thing." He keeps his tone light, but Shaun hears the hesitation and doesn't like it.

"What's wrong with me?"

Ezio doesn't answer, just sighs and sits next to Shaun on the bed. The cheap mattress creaks and dips a little under the added weight, and Shaun slides a little toward him. Unusually for him, Ezio doesn't say a word- he just puts one hand on Shaun's back, and runs his fingers down the bump of Shaun's spine.

"What are you…?"

And then Ezio's fingers move sideways, and hit something unexpected- a hard bulge of bone and muscle that should not be there. Under any other circumstances, Shaun would have been poking and prodding until he figures out what it is. But he still feels like crap, so he's perfectly happy to let Ezio keep going.

Ezio moves his hand, so that Shaun can feel the muscles in his back move in ways they shouldn't. It feels like he's grown an extra limb.

His breath hitches in his throat. A limb, or…

"What do you remember from when you were sick?" Ezio asks, voice more serious than Shaun can ever remember hearing it before.

"I remember throwing up a lot," Shaun says, because memory- fragmented and cloudy, but impossible and fantastic, as well- is starting to return. He can't repeat it aloud, though, because he can't bear to hear that it's just an invention of his fevered mind.

Ezio makes a quiet noise, a little like the chirping of a bird, and lets his hand drift away from Shaun's back, so that Shaun feels fingers in his feathers (and the feeling of feathers there in the first place almost makes his heart stop beating in shock). The gentle movement is enough to send chills rattling down Shaun's spine. "No…" he whispers, more out of disbelief than protest. He wanted this. He _still _wants this, but he feels utterly unworthy now that he has it.

Shaun knows exactly who and what he is. He's always been very aware that he's an intellect, not a fighter. It had been true before joining the assassins, and it's even more true now that he has. Shaun can't fight, he's not a warrior, he can't defend himself at all. Compared to the others, Shaun knows that he's just some nobody in over his head. Altair, Ezio, Connor- they are some of the greatest assassins to ever grace the order's ranks. All of them are legends. And Haytham, even if he had been a templar historically, is highly skilled and (apparently) on their side now. And Desmond is- was- had been- well, Desmond. He'd saved the entire bloody world.

And Shaun's just a historian. There's no way he can claim to be in the same class as the rest of them. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that he doesn't belong.

Shaun rolls over, onto his side. His wings (_his wings!_) flop behind him as he moves, and Shaun is left looking up at Ezio with sad, tired eyes. And Ezio understands (because of course he does, he always does, no matter how much Shaun tries to hide behind a wall of sarcasm). The hotel bed is large enough for both of them, even with Shaun's wings spilling across the blankets. Ezio laughs, moving them gently out of the way. "You look like a kicked puppy," he says.

"Shut up," Shaun says, not for the first time. He has other problems on his mind. "What do they look like?"

"You know what wings look like."

"What color?" Shaun asks, ignoring him. There's considerable variety between the wings he's seen- Connor's are such a light gray they almost look white, while Altair's are dark and frankly a little terrifying. The others fall somewhere along that spectrum. "How big? What-"

"They look exactly like mine," Ezio interrupts, and Shaun sighs. So now he's stolen Ezio's wings, along with everything else he's taken from the man.

"You haven't taken anything," Ezio says, as if he can read Shaun's mind (which he can). "None of us did anything to get our wings. You're exactly the same."

"But-"

"Stop worrying," Ezio says. He reaches a hand out and cups it around Shaun's neck, and Shaun hates the way the touch calms him. "When you're feeling better, I'll teach you to fly."

Shaun's eyes, which have started to droop closed again, fly open and he sits up in bed. "I'm feeling better," he says.

-/-

They race each other up the stairs to the roof. Ezio wins (of course), but Shaun doesn't care. The hotel is only three stories high, but it's not until he's standing on the ledge looking down that Shaun realizes how far off the ground that really is. "I'm having second thoughts," he says.

"Shaun?" Ezio says, patiently.

"Do you remember, when we were in Egypt-"

"It's kind of stuck in my mind, yea," Shaun says.

"_Before _the whole creepy blood ritual soul bonding part." Ezio walks right up behind Shaun. "And you didn't want to jump into that hole? You told me you'd never done a leap of faith?"

"You pushed me down." Shaun spins around, eyes wide, pointing an accusatory finger at Ezio. "Don't you _dare_-"

But Ezio's grin is absolutely maniacal as he give Shaun a good hard shove, and then he's tumbling backward with the wind in his ears and his eyes clamped shut. And then- from the corner of his mind where he buries all the useless information he's gotten from Ezio, the stuff he knows he'll never use- something useful kicks in and _he knows what to do._

He flips over, and his wings snap open to catch the wind. In seconds he's flying, not falling, and it's like nothing he's ever felt before. He laughs like a loon, but the wind snatches the sound away before it ever reaches his own ears. There's a sudden flash of color in Shaun's peripheral vision, and he turns to see Ezio soaring past him.

They race for a second time, through the air this time instead of up the stairs. And this time, there's nothing to stop Shaun from pushing as hard and as fast as he can. Maybe it's just the excitement, or maybe Ezio is holding back, but this time Shaun wins.

They land miles away from where they started, and it takes Shaun a second or two longer than it should to recognize that this is the same lake he'd gone to with Altair, a million years ago it seems. "What are we doing here?" he asks.

"Altair told me what he saw here," Ezio explains. "While you were out sick." And Shaun listens as Ezio tells him the most insane story he's ever heard. But when it's done, they're both left looking down at the water of the lake below them, and Shaun knows they're both thinking the same thing.

"Minerva's the one that gave us these wings," Shaun says, after a very long time. He tastes the word 'us' on his tongue, savoring the shape of it as he speaks. "And she's been trapped down there for God knows how long."

"It doesn't seem fair," Ezio agrees.

There's another long stretch of silence.

"It's not like she's the same as Juno," Ezio says. "She's not as dangerous."

"They're all dangerous," Shaun says, but he can't make himself feel really upset. The truth is, they owe her. And neither of them will be able to walk away until that debt is paid.

"We have to," Ezio says, and Shaun nods reluctantly.

Still, it's an easier decision to make than to follow through with, since even getting there is a problem. Ezio's a good swimmer, and Shaun is at least acceptable. The larger issue is the newness of Shaun's wings- his inexperience means that he doesn't yet know how to hide them, but wings are made for winds, not waters. Diving in with wings out is a good way to drown.

Eventually, it is Ezio's instincts and experience in the back of Shaun's head that lets him hide his wings away. He would never have been able to do it on his own, he just isn't familiar enough with the sudden addition to his anatomy. Without Ezio's knowledge prodding away from the back of Shaun's mind, he'd still be dragging them around like so much dead weight.

Shaun's expecting it to hurt, because after all he's heard Ezio complain about it more than once. And it does hurt, as his back slices open and then reseals around wings that are made to be free, not contained. What he's not ready for is the feeling that he's losing an important part of who he is. And this is after only a single day- he doesn't want to think how much worse it will be after weeks or months or years. When it's finally over, he looks up at Ezio. "It doesn't get any easier, does it?"

"It gets easier," Ezio says. "But it never hurts any less."

Shaun shivers at the flat pain in Ezio's voice, and when the other man dives into the water, Shaun takes a deep breath and follows. The water is clear but crushing, and by the time Shaun finally follows Ezio onto the (relatively) dry land of the hidden precursor site, he feels like his lungs are about to burst. He's only just gotten his breathing under control again when they reach the bottom of the stairs. Shaun I half a step behind, and the moment he steps into the room, the air seems to fill with a warm light, solid enough that Shaun can feel it gathering on his shoulders and head. "So this is… weird," he says, glancing sideways at Ezio.

"What isn't, these days?" Ezio asks, and Shaun shrugs, suddenly feeling dumb for bringing it up. Here he is, standing in a millennia old room hidden under a lake in the middle of nowhere with the alternate universe incarnation of one of the most famous assassins in history, a man he's been magically soul bonded to, who has just passed his wings to Shaun. It's not like a little light can live up to all that.

"Good point," Shaun concedes, and he turns his attention back to figuring out what's going on in the rest of the room.

It's started to gather into a tight little ball in the center of the room, connected to Shaun and Ezio by cords of light. Like twin umbilical cords, Shaun tries very hard not to think. He's busy studying these when he feels a sharp stab of surprise from Ezio, and looks up again. And this- this actually is weird, because the light is growing more solid by the moment, and it's not just a fuzzy ball of light anymore. It's taken on a definite shape, a human shape, although admittedly still small and fragile. It's a baby.

"No _way_," Shaun breathes, and he expects to feel horrified or afraid or at least upset, but he doesn't. There's something amazing about watching this, knowing that he and Ezio are making a baby. And maybe it's not the most conventional method of bringing a kid into the world, but it's still something amazing. Something is being sucked out of him, into the baby, but it's not something it hurts to lose. Instead, Shaun feels more… complete than he has in a long time. This is almost a peaceful moment, and there are far too few of those, these days.

"I think I like this method of reincarnation better than what Juno did," Ezio says, and Shaun nods in silent agreement. They watch as the baby starts to grow, slowly but still much more quickly than is natural. Shaun's mind races, connecting dots, figuring things out. So Minerva doesn't have a body- the technology here, plus Shaun and Ezio, are here to give (or grow) her a new one. It's probably easier to start from infanthood and grow to adulthood from there.

Ezio moves to crouch next to the infant- although she's more of a toddler by now. He brushes her hair away from her face with a tenderness that's almost surprising. Then he glances back at Shaun, beckoning him closer. Shaun hesitates, then gives in and looks the child over more closely. From what he remembers of Minerva- and it's not like he's seen that much of her- this is clearly the same person. Younger, obviously, but the same.

Except… as she continues to get older, as her features lose the plumpness of babyhood and start to grow into something more distinctive, Shaun realizes he can see a trace of Ezio in her. And, more startling still, traces of himself.

"We made a baby," Ezio says, and makes a noise that starts out as a laugh and ends in a sob.

"You feeling alright?" Shaun asks.

"Yea," Ezio says, but his voice is still thick with some unknown emotion. "This just reminds me how unlikely it is that I'm ever going to have kids, or a family. How could I bring any woman into this? Or children? With everything I've been through, with all my secrets, with- with you?"

"I don't know," Shaun says. He presses against Ezio in a gesture that he knows perfectly well is useless as a comfort. Because Ezio is right. The only way either of them would ever get a serious relationship is through a miracle, or by meeting the world's most understanding woman. "I guess it's just you and me and her," he says.

"No offense, Shaun," Ezio says. "But it's not exactly the same. I don't care what kind of connection we have- I like women over men, and we're never going to be a couple."

"That's not what I'm saying," Shaun says. "But… we're stuck together for now, maybe forever. And you said it yourself. We just made a baby. You're in my head more than I am these days, and I have _wings _because of you. We're not just coworkers anymore, or friends."

"We're not dating, either," Ezio insists.

"I _know_," Shaun snaps. "So I don't know what that makes us, but we're definitely something, and I would like to figure that out."

"Yea," Ezio says, after a long pause. "Okay, sure. It's not like we have much choice, right?" For a little while, they're silent, watching the child-Minerva grow. She looks maybe seven or eight when Shaun hears a new voice behind them. It's unexpected, and entirely unwelcome- the sound of Juno's voice, unforgettable even after all these months makes Shaun's whole body go stiff.

"Sweet," she says, in a tone so full of cruel mockery it hits Shaun like a blade. "But I don't think this is going to work out."

Shaun doesn't have time to do more than turn his head before Juno lunges at Ezio- clearly she considers him the bigger threat- a long, wicked dagger in one hand. And even though it's Ezio that the knife cuts into, Shaun feels something like fire suddenly burst across his gut. He screams, but at least manages to stay conscious, unlike Ezio. The golden light in the room turns suddenly red, and Minerva drops heavily to the floor, convulsing in seizure.

Juno wrenches the knife out of Ezio, and he falls to the ground next to Minerva, facedown and very still. He might be dead already, and if he's not then he might be soon. Suddenly, and for the first time in years, Shaun feels pure anger wash over and through him, hot and prickling. Juno turns abruptly to him, and Shaun realizes that if he doesn't do something, all three of them are going to die here. Their bodies will rot here, and nobody but Juno will ever know.

Shaun's unarmed, but he knows Ezio doesn't go anywhere without half an arsenal on him. Juno lunges a second time, but Shaun manages to dive out of the way just in time. He grabs Ezio's gun from its holster, and turns back to Juno. He's had some training in guns, but he's nothing special, and the steadiness of his own hands surprises him. His gut is still burning with stolen pain, and he's never been much of a shot, so the bullet goes wide. Still, it's a lucky shot, hitting Juno in the arm so that her fingers convulse and she drops the knife.

She snarls and Shaun fires again, missing completely this time- she backhands him across the face with terrifying, inhuman strength, and Shaun goes flying. His head hits the stone wall of the room with a crack louder than the gunshots had been, and there's nothing he can do to fight the blackness that comes rushing up to claim him.


	13. Chapter 13

**August**

**-/-**

It's been over a month since either Haytham or Rebecca last had word from any of the others. Some days, it feels like the greatest gift they could have gotten. The others are the only family Haytham has, but he's not up for the looks and gossips he knows would come if they were all still in contact. Alone, it's given him and Rebecca a chance to get closer than they would have if the others were around.

On the other hand, he's frankly worried. The last time any of them spoke had been in the middle of June- the last Haytham had heard, Altair and Shaun were on their way up to Canada for some reason or another, while Ezio and Connor were hunting precursor artifacts in some distant corner of the map. Something has clearly happened, but Haytham has no idea what that something could be. Honestly, it has him worried, and he knows Rebecca isn't sleeping well.

She's started sleeping at his place, and Haytham really isn't sure if it's because of any particular attractiveness on his part, or just that she finds it harder to sleep alone. If the latter, it's obviously not working. The third night in a row that Haytham wakes to find himself alone in bed and Rebecca staring absentmindedly out the window, he confronts her about it.

Haytham slides out of bed and pads across the room to stand behind her. She's got her headphones on, and doesn't make any sign that she hears him or knows he's there until he wraps his arms around her. Even then she's unusually quiet, reaching a hand up to hold his, but otherwise not reacting.

"What's wrong?" he asks, voice quiet in deference to the late hour and his sleeping neighbors. "Please tell me." Because he has absolutely no idea how women work, and Rebecca is particularly difficult to understand. It's one of the things he lov- one of the things he _really likes _about her. They haven't gotten as far as the L-word yet, and he's half afraid of what will happen when they do.

"Altair called," she says. "Last week."

His hands tighten around Rebecca. "Is he alright?"

"He sounded fine," Rebecca says. "Just… tired. I don't know. I think something's wrong. I just keep thinking about everything that could have happened, and it's all…" she turns around so she's looking at Haytham, but doesn't make any move to pull away from his embrace. "What if someone's hurt?" she asks. "Or dead? I've been so worried…"

"Why didn't you tell me?" Haytham asks. "You said he called a week ago, and I never even had a clue."

"I just didn't know how to say it," Rebecca says. "Don't be mad, please don't be mad-"

"I'm not mad," Haytham says, startled. It hasn't even occurred to him to be angry, and maybe that says something about just how accustomed he's gotten to being out of the loop. "No, Rebecca. It's just…" and he's a little surprised how easily the next words come. "You've been so upset lately, and you didn't have to go through any of it alone." He gives her the most serious look he can manage. "I'm right here. And I want to help."

"I know." She offers him a quick smile, and looks almost like her old self for a second. "Thank you. For being here."

"Well, it is my apartment."

This time, her startled laugh seems far more genuine. But it still fades too quickly. "There's more," she says. "He's coming tomorrow, and he wants to talk to the two of us."

"That means things must be bad," Haytham says slowly. "I'm not supposed to have any contact with the rest of them."

"I know," Rebecca says. "I'm sorry, I should have said-"

"There's nothing to be sorry for," Haytham says. "Come back to bed?"

She nods, and this time they sleep soundly until morning. And when Haytham wakes again, to the uninspiring sound of an alarm clock reminding him it's time to get ready for work, the sight of Rebecca asleep against his chest makes the morning seem so much brighter.

-/-

He calls in sick instead of going to work that day. It's not something he's ever done before, but Rebecca is more than happy to impart a wealth of advice. It starts off mostly practical, but by the time he gets off the phone she's hissing at him to tell them he's been run over by a hippo, and they're both struggling not to laugh.

It's mostly nerves, and trying not to think about the kind of bad news Altair might be bringing when he comes. Haytham's full of nervous energy, but Rebecca's sleepless nights are finally starting to catch up with her. She insists they spend the morning in bed, doing as little as possible. "We'll watch movies or something," she says, and Haytham doesn't argue. He'd never even owned a television before Rebecca. It wasn't like it had been around when he was a kid, and there have always been more important things to do with his time.

But Rebecca has a thing about movies. Her tastes range all over the map, and with her around Haytham's been exposed to everything from explosion heavy blockbusters to cheesy romances, and everything in between. They watch classics from the earliest days of movie making, and films so awful Haytham's sure no one but the two of them even remembers they exist. A lot of them are movies Haytham wouldn't have cared for if he'd seen them on his own, but because they come from Rebecca they're one of the best parts of Haytham's life right now.

Around noon, Rebecca starts on a Bond marathon, and an hour or two after that she falls asleep against Haytham. He lets his mind wander, half watching the movie and half brooding. This should have been a perfect day, and in any other circumstances, it would have been. But Altair's impending visit casts a shadow over everything.

He doesn't realize that he's fallen asleep until he feels a hand on his shoulder. Altair's arrived at some point while he was asleep, and the look on his face makes Haytham sit up and take notice. "Long time no see," he says, nudging Rebecca awake as well. "What's wrong?" Because Altair's face is pale and drawn, and he looks like he's been sleeping even worse than Rebecca.

"A lot, actually," Altair says. "Things have been busy, and I wanted to tell you in person."

"Oh, God," Haytham says. "It's not Connor, is it?"

"No," Altair reassures him. "Connor's fine."

"So who isn't fine?" Rebecca demands. "Altair-"

"Let me just start by saying that nobody actually died," Altair says. And then- as Haytham exchanges a worried look with Rebecca- he tells them everything that had happened over the last couple months. Coming up to Canada with Shaun, finding Minerva's hiding place, Shaun growing wings, and finally what had happened when they went to bring Minerva back.

"I took Connor and went looking for them," Altair says, when he gets to the end of his story. "I found Ezio and Shaun, but no sign of Minerva. We got them out and found a doctor that never asked questions. It's been touch and go for a while, but Ezio's starting to heal, and Shaun's finally awake, so I thought it was about time I got you two caught up."

"Yea," Rebecca snaps. "About time."

"Rebecca-"

"How much effort would it have taken to pick up a phone and call?" she demands, shouting now. "They were dying and we didn't even know!"

"Rebecca," Haytham says. "Neighbors."

She drops her voice but doesn't get any less angry. "You should have let us know."

"We were less than twenty miles away," Altair explains. "I thought it was the wrong time to take any kind of risk with Abstergo finding us."

"That's no excuse," Rebecca says. "It's wrong, and you shouldn't have-"

She stops talking abruptly, and Haytham puts his arm around her shoulders. She's shaking.

"And you said there's been no sign of Minerva?" he asks.

"None at all," Altair says. "But there's been no sign of Juno, either."

"So what happens now?" Rebecca asks. "Do we get to see them, or..?"

"You can, absolutely," Altair says. "But Haytham, you-"

"I know," Haytham grumbles. "I'm still undercover."

"Not for much longer, I think," Altair says. "It's been almost eight months, and it looks like the templars know nothing about Juno. As soon as Shaun and Ezio are well enough to travel, we're leaving the country. The two of you should be with us."

"That's great news," Rebecca says, looking over at Haytham.

"Hmm," he says.

"It is great," she says again, elbowing him gently in the side. "Isn't it?"

"Abstergo is still searching through my father's memories," Haytham explains. "I need to stay until they're finished at least. Just until the end of October, just to be sure… that they don't do anything particularly horrible to his memory."

Rebecca frowns. "Come on, Haytham," she says. "They're going to do what they want, no matter whether you're there or not."

"I have to be there anyway," he says, aware that he's being stubborn for absolutely no reason, and even that he _wants _to leave. It's mostly a vague sense of duty that makes him keep arguing. "Besides-" he looks at Altair. "You said Juno got to Shaun and Ezio almost as soon as they started doing… whatever they were doing. Assuming she- I don't know, sensed it or something, and started for the lake instantly, she still got there really quickly. Right?"

"Within half an hour, according to Shaun," Altair agrees.

"So she was probably close," Haytham goes on. "And maybe she still is. If that place is as close to here as you said it is, she might even be inside the city. It would fit the timing, how quickly she got there…"

Altair nods, after a long moment of consideration. "But you really shouldn't be here much longer. You said you could be done by the end of October. As long as you are, that should be alright."

"Fine," Haytham agrees. "That should be sufficient." It'll have to be.

"So… I have some stuff I need to get from my place," Rebecca says, into the sudden silence. "I'll be back in an hour or so."

She slides off Haytham's bed, gathers her shoes and jacket, and leaves. Altair waits until her footsteps have faded away down the hall, then turns back to Haytham. There's a clear look of disapproval on his face that Haytham doesn't like.

"What?" he asks, although he has a fairly good idea what his problem is at the moment.

"Rebecca."

And… there it is. "Frankly, that's none of your business," Haytham snaps, more sharply than he'd intended. He rubs at his face impatiently with one hand, mentally counting down from ten to get his temper back under control. "She and I are both adults. We know what we've gotten ourselves into. At least… as much as anyone ever does in relationships."

"You know this is just going to get more complicated when everyone's back together," Altair says. "I mean, just seeing Shaun again could be-"

"It _will_ be hard," Haytham agrees. "But here's the thing. They never actually dated. Everyone thought they would, one day. But it didn't work out. Sometimes that's just the way life goes. She doesn't owe him anything, and he doesn't owe her anything, either." He crosses his arms. "We have talked about this, you know."

Altair only sighs. "I hope this goes the way you're expecting," he says.

"But you don't think it will."

"I don't," Altair says flatly, and Haytham winces. "But I've been wrong before. For your sake, I sincerely hope this is one of those times."

Haytham nods, and stands. He suddenly wants very badly for this meeting to be over. "If that's all-"

"No," Altair says. "It's not."

"Then..?"

"For a long time," Altair says, quietly, "I believed our time travelling meant we were cursed to leave no mark on the future. I thought doing anything that would have a major effect on the timeline could only be disastrous. But now we know it was Juno, trying to outmaneuver Minerva and keep Desmond's bloodline pure, things are different. We're here because of her, and that means I have no problem fighting back against her."

"Everything is permitted?" Haytham asks.

"Exactly," Altair says. "It's been a long time since I truly believed that, but now…" he actually smiles a little. "Do what you think is right, Haytham. "Just remember that 'everything is permitted' means the consequences of your actions are yours to bear as well."

And with these weighty words, Altair excuses himself, leaving Haytham alone with his suddenly troubled thoughts.

**-/-**

**I'm not 100% sure, because sometimes I like to go off on tangents and whatever, but I think the next chapter will probably be the last one before I break it up for the sequel. Expect the return of some missing people, more awkward attempts at relationships, and cliffhangers.**


	14. Chapter 14

**September**

**-/-**

He sees her on a street corner not three blocks from the Abstergo building.

For a long moment, Haytham just stares at Juno, half afraid he's just seeing things. They've been looking for her for very nearly nine months now, and here she is, standing in a crowd of other pedestrians waiting to cross the street. Finally, after a pause that goes on far too long, Haytham remembers that she's perfectly capable of turning around and seeing him. He steps casually into cover, and observes her more casually. It's all he can do not to stare like an imbecile, but he manages, somehow.

If he hadn't spent so much of the last nine months looking for Juno, Haytham's fairly sure he wouldn't have recognized her. She looks different. Human, ordinary, smaller and decidedly less otherworldly than when he had last set eyes on her. She's dressed well, in clothes that are both well-made and (in Haytham's extremely limited knowledge of woman's clothing) fashionable. Only her face is the same, cold and stern and haughty. And the eyes- they're just as mad as ever, burning with the light of some intense purpose Haytham can't begin to comprehend.

And she's not alone. Haytham doesn't make the connection until Juno leans over to say something to the man next to her, but when he turns to answer, Haytham gets a good look at the man's face, and recognizes it. His name's John… something or other. Some nobody from Abstergo's IT department that Haytham has spoken to a grand total of once.

There had been some kind of problem with his computer, and John had come up to fix the damned machine. He'd been rude and snide the entire time, and Haytham's natural reaction had been to respond with sarcasm and barely disguised insults. It was only the arrival of Rebecca- entirely by coincidence, to pick up a document from someone a few desks over- and her significant 'shut up, you're still undercover' look that stopped the conversation from ending in blows.

Apart from the obvious horror that there are people in the world insane enough to deal with Juno, Haytham is weirdly satisfied with the validation that the man really is an asshole. Rebecca's been teasing him nonstop over getting so worked up, but if John's working with Juno, disliking the man is practically a requirement.

The light changes, and Juno disappears with John across the street and around a corner. Haytham doesn't bother following. He knows where John works, after all, and trailing them now will only raise suspicions. For the moment there are other, better, avenues of investigation.

It's Sunday, a day off work that could not have been more perfectly timed. He spends most of it researching John, looking him up on google and searching for any signs of what might have driven him to Juno. At first, there's nothing. John looks entirely normal on paper, a perfectly ordinary man with a perfectly ordinary past. He was born and raised in Montreal, the only child of a father that had died five years ago (cancer) and a mother that had moved away to live with a sister an hour or two away. He has a degree in computer sciences, a work history that seems entirely real, even a membership at a gym somewhere that apparently hasn't been used more than half a dozen times in the past year. There's no sign of any criminal or violent leanings, no history of insanity, nothing at all to connect him to Juno. Haytham is just starting to get frustrated when he finally gets lucky.

There's a police report from the end of July with John's name on it, and until Haytham actually opens the file and reads through the details. To his disappointment, it's nothing criminal, nothing that could point back to Juno, just an accident report about a van he'd been driving somewhere just outside the edge of the city. He curses, slams a hand down on his desk, and stands abruptly enough to send his chair toppling to the ground.

One of his neighbors bangs on the wall, shouting at him to keep it down. Haytham considers shouting back- he's been kept up more than one night by the sounds of that particular neighbor and his overly enthusiastic girlfriend- but before he can say a word there's a quieter knock on the apartment door, and Rebecca lets herself in.

"Why do you bother knocking if you're just going to walk in?" Haytham demands.

"Just a bad habit," Rebecca says cheerfully, absolutely unmoved by his less than polite tone. "You didn't have to give me a key." She crosses the room, leans over his desk to study the still open laptop. "What's wrong, and what does it have to do with two month old accident reports?"

"The van was driven by one of Juno's associates," Haytham says. "I've been trying to get something on him all day, and some pointless car wreck is the best I can do."

"Since when does Juno have associates?" Rebecca asks.

"Since this morning," Haytham answers, grimly. "I saw them together."

"You-" Rebecca takes her eyes off the laptop screen long enough to gape at him. "Did you tell anyone?"

"Not yet."

"Hmm," Rebecca says, and turns back to the screen. It's a thoughtful sound, not an angry one. "I don't think this is pointless."

"Pretty sure it is," Haytham says. Then, because Rebecca is a smarter woman than he deserves, he asks, "Why do you think it isn't?"

"Look at the date," Rebecca says. "That's the day Juno almost killed Shaun and Ezio."

"Oh," Haytham says, and in the next second they're both leaning over the desk, studying the report with new intensity. "You're right."

"Of course I am," Rebecca says. "And there's more. You haven't been to the lake where it all went down, but I have, and that road's the quickest way back to the city. He could have been there that day. With Juno."

Haytham straightens and heads for the door.

"Where are you going?" Rebecca calls after him.

"Police station," Haytham says. "I have some questions that need answering."

-/-

"I remember that one, yea. Nasty accident, couldn't believe anyone survived it."

Haytham nods at the man, and waits for something more substantial to come out of the officer's mouth. This is the policeman that had been first on the scene the day of John's accident, an obvious gossip that had needed absolutely no encouragement to talk when Haytham and Rebecca corner him on his way home after his shift. "But he did survive," he prompts.

"Oh yea," the man says. "Miracle, that's what I call it. The van was a heap of scrap metal, but no casualties. Almost enough to make you believe in a higher power, am I right?"

"Right," Haytham says, tersely. Regardless of his own feelings on religion and faith, the last thing he wants is anyone connecting Juno to godhood. She does enough of that on her own. "But did you notice anything unusual?"

"Besides three people walking away from a crash like that?"

"Yes," Haytham says. "Besides that."

"Hang on," Rebecca interrupts. "Three people?"

The officer shrugs and nods. "Husband, wife, and daughter, I guess."

So John hadn't been alone during the accident. Haytham shares a grim, knowing look with Rebecca.

"And they all walked away without a scratch?" Haytham asks, returning his attention to the man.

"Didn't say that," the man says. "The woman had a lot of blood on her, but I think she'd been hurt already. There were bandages on her arm."

Shaun had shot Juno in the arm.

"And the girl…" the man's face goes distant, like he's considering how best to explain. "I don't know. She didn't look all there, if that makes any sense. I thought at the time she might have a concussion from the crash but… it might have been something else. She just seemed really confused, that's all."

"Thank you," Haytham says, and turns to walk away. He starts to speak in a low voice to Rebecca as soon as he judges they're far enough away. "The woman's obviously Juno, and if they took Minerva that must have been the kid."

Rebecca nods. "Shaun and Ezio both said she started seizing when Juno interrupted the process. She might have brain damage or something. It could explain why she looked confused." She shakes her head. "But what confuses _me _is why they'd take her at all, instead of just killing her."

"I don't-"

"Hey!" the officer calls suddenly, and both of them look back at him. "I just remembered something else weird. I didn't think much about it until just now, but it's pretty unusual, I guess."

"What?"

"Bird feathers," the man says. "Hawk, maybe? Or an owl? Eagle, maybe?" He frowns. "I don't know anything about birds, but there were feathers all over the accident scene."

"Thank you," Rebecca says, sweetly, and this time they manage to walk away without being called back. They split up at the end of the block, Rebecca headed back to her apartment to call the others, and Haytham out to the junkyard to see if the wrecked van will tell them anything more.

It's a long walk out, back Haytham doesn't own a car and has a healthy dislike of public transportation. He spends much of the walk considering all the things he hopes to find there, and dismissing each one in turn as unlikely in the extreme. Still, he has to try, and when he gets to the junkyard he ducks through a deserted side entrance and goes looking for John's van.

He finds it near the back of the yard, twisted and smashed so thoroughly that Haytham has to admit the police officer had been right. That three people could walk away from this alive and relatively unhurt is, in fact, a miracle. As if Juno needs one of those.

He goes over every inch of the van, as carefully as possible, but finds nothing. Someone- John or Juno or maybe the police- have already been here, and taken everything of value. Haytham is about to give up and walk away when he hears an unexpected voice behind him. It sounds rough and hoarse, like the speaker doesn't have the chance to speak much.

"The girl got away."

Haytham doesn't turn around, doesn't make any move to indicate he's at all alarmed. "Did she?" he asks.

"She obviously wasn't working with the other two," the stranger goes on. "And we thought we'd get her away from them." He gives a rough laugh. "She didn't see us as rescuers, I guess. Bit and scratched and clawed like a wild thing, and then ran off. Haven't been able to find her since."

"And why are you telling me all this?" Haytham asks, still making a show of studying the van.

"Because, Haytham," the man says, and Haytham can't stop the way his whole body goes stiff with surprise when he hears his name. "It seemed as good an excuse as any to talk to you again."

Haytham turns around, hidden blade at the ready, wings hidden but still tense, ready to burst free at the slightest thought. He has no idea who he's going to see, or which reaction would be more appropriate. But then he sees the face of the stranger- only _not _a stranger, no- and all thoughts of fight and flight vanish completely.

"You," he says, and that's the only word he can manage through the sudden choking shock forcing his voice away.

"Yea," the man says, offering a crooked, sincere smile. "Me."

-/-

Altair is on the road only minutes after he gets Rebecca's call. Connor argues with him all the way to the car, but Altair ignores him. It's true that he's angry right now, so angry that he's not even thinking straight. But it also doesn't matter. In the past nine months, they've seen Juno a grand total of three times. Once on the day she killed Desmond, once on the day she tried to kill Ezio and Shaun, and then again this morning. This time, Altair is determined to make sure the death that follows is hers.

"I'm coming with you, at least," Connor insists.

"Absolutely not," Altair says. "We know Juno has allies now. This could all be a trap, and if it is that means there could be more of them coming this way. Shaun's not a fighter, and Ezio's injury isn't completely healed yet. You know he'll only make it worse if he has to fight now."

"Fine," Connor says. "But don't do anything stupid."

"I'm not a stupid man, Connor," Altair says. "I don't do stupid things."

"Not usually," Connor agrees. "Not until Desmond died."

And although Altair would never admit it to anyone else, he knows Connor is right. On the half hour drive into the city, he acknowledges that truth, considers the consequences, and decides they are not important. There's a reason he insisted on coming alone, and it's not the one he'd given Connor. The truth is, he is ready to die today if it means bringing Juno down with him. She's taken Desmond- taken his son- away from him. Now it's finally time for this to end.

He has no particular plan when he gets to Montreal, no idea of where to go or look, so he wanders down streets and allies for what feels like hours, searching for any sign of Juno. But there is nothing, not for hours and hours on end.

In the end he calls Rebecca, asks if she knows John's address.

"Yea," she says. "I can text it to you. Are you going to confront him?"

"No," Altair says. "Yes. I don't know."

"You sound-"

"I'm fine," Altair says. "But this is the closest we've come to Juno all year. If we don't act quickly, we could- we _will _lose her."

"Altair…" Rebecca takes a deep breath, scratchy and distorted over the phone's speaker. He waits, with less patience than usual for her to gather her thoughts. But when she finally speaks, all she says is "be careful".

Altair makes no promises, does not even reply, only hangs up and- when he's memorized the promised address- switches off his phone. He wants no more judgments, no more cautions or words of warning. All he wants is revenge.

He ditches the car a quarter mile away and finishes the approach on foot. It's only luck (good or bad) that sees him arrive at the end of the street just as John walks out his front door. Altair knows him by the flash of red in his eagle vision, and suddenly he's angry. Furious, dangerously so. He's too angry to think straight, and he charges straight at John with no thought for the consequences. He only cares that John works for or with Juno. He doesn't even stop to think that John could tell him where Juno is. Right now, Altair wants blood, and the need for it falls across his mind and drops like a haze across his eyes. He is an assassin chasing his victim, an eagle hunting his prey. There is nothing but instinct at this moment, no awareness of anything in the world but John.

He's one block away, still behind John and still unseen, when something small and heavy slams into the side of his head. Years of experience keep Altair from crying out, but the surprise knocks him off his feet and he falls, hard, his head hitting the sidewalk with a crack that makes his ears ring. Desperately, he flicks his eyes upward to John, but the man has his nose buried in his phone and doesn't even notice. He just keeps walking away, finally vanishing around a corner and out of sight.

And all the time he is watching John vanish, Altair is still fighting against the thing that had landed on his head. It's a bird- an eagle- all claws and beak and screeching anger in his ear. Altair, inarticulate with rage, shouts in response and draws out his hidden blade.

The bird shrieks and flies away, landing on a branch at around face level. Altair growls, surges upward to his feet, and moves to strike. The bird spreads its wings and shrieks a second time as its whole body seems to spasm and change. This time, Altair stops dead in his tracks, all anger abruptly and totally gone. For a moment there is shock, and then nothing but a kind of numb amazement as his mind tries and fails to process what his eyes are showing him.

The bird has become a man, ghostly and half transparent but very real and very familiar. "Des-" he swallows hard, past the lump in his throat, and tries again. "Desmond?"

Desmond nods, and presses his hand to his face as his shoulders shake with some uncontrollable emotion. He tries to speak but can't manage to get even a single word out, and Altair doesn't hesitate in stepping forward and gathering his son into his arms. Desmond doesn't resist, burying his face in Altair shoulder and seeking comfort in a way he hasn't since he was a child.

When they have both managed to gather their wits a little, Altair draws back a little and studies every inch of Desmond's face. He looks almost the same as he had that day (when he'd died) in the temple, only a little more worn and a little more tired, and there's something indefinably avian about him, as though Altair is still seeing traces of the eagle Desmond had been mere minutes ago. And of course he's only half visible, even if he does feel perfectly solid under Altair's hands.

"You're alive," Altair says.

"Yea," Desmond says, and his voice sounds like it hasn't been used much recently. "Not exactly human, but…" he shrugs. "Yea, alive."

"You never- Desmond, you should have said something."

"I couldn't," Desmond protests. "Doing this-" and he gestures to his human body- "Isn't easy." As if in confirmation, his form flickers and almost vanishes, like a signal drowned in a storm. "It took months to learn and by then you were travelling, most of the time I didn't know where you were and I was so scared of what you would say when you saw that I couldn't- I couldn't…"

"I would say that I'm so glad you're alive," Altair says. "And I don't care about anything else. I just don't understand. How-?"

"Minerva," Desmond says, and Altair feels a guilty twist in his gut at the memory of what had happened to her less than a half an hour's drive from here. "She saved me."

"Another debt we owe her," Altair says, when what he means that this is another way they've failed her. She's been helping them since Altair had first grown his wings, and they had never even known. Worse, when she had come to them for help in return, they had failed her, gotten her killed or kidnapped or something else.

"What?" Desmond asks, but Altair shakes his head. He doesn't want to talk about Minerva now, not during what should be a happy time.

"Nothing," he says. "Why did you..?" and he touches a hand to the side of his head, where he'd hit his head when Desmond knocked him to the ground.

"Sorry," Desmond says. "I didn't know how else to stop you. I didn't want you to hurt yourself like you did in California."

When he'd acted out of stubbornness and stupidity, and fallen, and (so he'd thought) imagined Desmond's voice. "You were really there?" he asks.

"Yea," Desmond says. "But back then I was just learning how to look human again. I couldn't hold it more than thirty seconds or so, and it's dangerous to push it too far." He shrugs. "You had that same look on your face, like you don't care what happens to you anymore."

"I didn't," Altair agrees. "I do now."

Desmond gives Altair an almost accusing look. "I finally found you again, and here you are on some kind of stupid suicide mission?" He breaks eye contact with Altair, glances at the corner where John had vanished. "Who was that guy, anyway?"

"I'll… explain later," Altair says. "It's a long story and there's so much to talk about. I have questions for you, too-"

"And I'll answer them," Desmond says. "But not now." He flickers again, and this time Altair notices a look of pain cross his face, and he remembers what Desmond had said about it being dangerous to keep to a human form for too long.

"Do what you need to," he says. "I'll be here when you need me. Always."

Desmond vanishes, and for half a heartbeat Altair feels the familiar ache of his loss start to take hold of him again. Then the eagle cries out and flaps its wings, and a moment later it has come to rest on his shoulder, heavy and sharp but reassuring. And Altair laughs out loud, a deep and joyful laugh that would have convinced anyone passing by that he is a madman. It doesn't matter, though, because for the first time in nine months, the world is a place worth living in again.

He's been falling since Desmond died, with no solid ground under his feet to support him and no safety net to catch him. But now, finally, he's landed. And everything's alright, because he doesn't care if Desmond is human or bird or something in between. He's alive, and that's what matters.

**-/-**

**And... that's the end of Free Fall! And yes, I am fully aware that there are still issues that need resolving. The thing is, this was always going to be a trilogy, and this was always going to where the split happened. Part three will hopefully tie up everything that needs tying up, and should be posted relatively soon. I want to do some plotting and figure out details before I post the first chapter, so that might take some time. But anyway, watch out for that when it comes!**

**Oh! And I would be very curious to know if anyone knows who Haytham was talking to at the end of his bit. I feel like it's really obvious, but I'm the one writing it so I'm a little biased.**


	15. Epilogue

**I'm a dirty rotten liar, here's an extra chapter. But to be fair, I thought this was going to be part of the sequel until suddenly it turned into an epilogue.**

**-/-**

The streets of the city never really get quiet, but at night they at least slow down enough to let the girl think. During the day, with the never ending parade of people rushing past in every direction, when the noise and the chaos crawl inside her head and claw at her brain, it's all she can do to keep from curling up in a corner and whimpering quietly until the _feelings _pass. But by then, she's so tired from the effort of keeping her head in one piece that normally she passes out at the first opportunity.

She doesn't know how long she's been here, or where she was before that, or how she got from one place to the other. She doesn't know what this place is called, and on bad days, she doesn't even know her own name. But most days are bad days, and so the girl spends most of her life in a confused haze of pain and unhappiness. On good days, the days when her name comes swimming out of the mess that is her mind, she repeats it to herself like a mantra. Over and over again until finally the chaos in her head crowds it out again, and she forgets.

Today, it's raining and cold. The girl is dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, and her feet are bare. She's not dressed for the weather, and she's soaked through nearly as soon as she hears the first ominous roll of thunder. But there's nothing she can do about that, and the streets are still packed, despite the terrible weather, so the buzzing in her head keeps her from caring too much about pointless problems like the rain or the cold.

So she lets the rain wash over her until she's so wet and cold she doesn't even notice anymore, just sitting as still and silent as a stone. The girl is wedged into a corner under an awning, not the best shelter but the best she is able to find. People on the street skirt around her, avoiding eye contact and pretending not to see how much she needs their help.

But none of this is unusual, and the girl isn't expecting anything from any of them. The only surprise is when a man suddenly appears from nowhere and sits himself down on the ground next to her. The girl edges away from him, because even with her brain constantly on the verge of melting into sludge, she can see that there's something about the stranger that doesn't seem right. He's tall, with a creepy mustache and eyes that don't match, and his smile is a leer as he looks down at her.

"What is a thing like you doing in a place like this?" the man asks. His voice is light, almost joking, and it makes the girl like him even less.

"Sitting," she says.

"On your own?" he asks, and when the girl nods he scowls in an over the top manner. "Well, that won't work," he says. "You're far too young for that. You can't be older than- six? Seven?"

"Eight," she says, even though she has no idea, just to prove him wrong.

"Eight, then," the man says agreeably. "And do you have a name?"

She shakes her head no, and squirms away from the look in the man's eyes. Eager. Hungry. "I can get you some food, if you want."

And the girl's stomach is empty, but she's not desperate enough to take anything from this man. Some deeply buried instinct, there and then gone when she tries to understand, makes her want nothing more than to be as far away as possible from this strange man and his hungry eyes. She makes the mistake of looking up and into them again, and regrets it at once. They're two different colors, and hold no kindness at all.

The man sighs and adopts a tone of confidentiality, dropping his voice to a whisper and leaning in closer. His breath smells terrible, like some kind of dead fish. "I didn't want to say anything," he tells her. "But the truth is, I have this friend that would really love to meet you. She could give you a place to stay, as much food as you want, real clothes-"

The girl panics without knowing why, and lashes out instinctively with all the strength she can manage. He swears as she kicks in just the right place, and she's up and running before he can follow her. Right now she knows nothing, not where she is going or where she has come from or even her own name. All she has to hold onto is the certainty that the man- and his friend- are her enemies.

Three blocks away, she stops and leans into a corner, hiding her face in the wall and shivering in cold and terror. She can hear the man coming after her, shouting as he moves. And for just a second, the anger in his voice triggers something in her mind, and she remembers-

_Hands tied behind her, thick ropes rubbing the skin on her wrists raw-_

_Stuffed in the back of a van, huddled against the side and trying not to think about anything, because everything inside her head hurts when she tries to focus-_

_A man and a woman in the front, the man driving, the woman in the seat next to him, silent but terrifying-_

_And then suddenly a flash of something flying past, a bird, and a moment of hope like something taking flight inside her chest. The man swears, jerks the steering wheel, and the whole van tilts, teeters, and falls-_

_A pain in her head, a long piece of glass digging into the palm of her hand-_

_The man, lashing out at the bird but only managing to knock a few feathers out. The bird screeches and claws at his face-_

_Some policeman, asking questions. The woman's hand on her shoulder, making the girl's skin crawl as she listens to the lies-_

_Being led away, and knowing this is her last chance if she wants to escape-_

_Fighting, kicking, biting, running-_

_And the man's voice behind her, angry and loud, shouting a name, her name-_

"Minerva!"

She waits until he's finally gone before sinking to the ground, knees drawn to her chest and eyes staring blankly into nothing. There's a steady stream of people passing by, and the noise is like tiny bugs digging holes in her head and crawling inside until she can't feel her own mind under the weight of the rest of the world, until all her memories fade to nothing, and there's nothing in her head but empty blackness.


End file.
